Award Date

5-1-2017

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

First Committee Member

Donald Revell

Second Committee Member

Maile Chapman

Third Committee Member

Claudia Keelan

Fourth Committee Member

Rayme Cornell

Number of Pages

67

Abstract

Abstract

This thesis, submitted for completion for the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, is a manuscript of poems entitled Radio Spring. The collection reckons with distance. The poems move through a domestic landscape, observing the ecstasy and despairs of a variety of relationships within a widespread community. Through subjective, sensual experience, the distinct movements of the collection explore the process of separation, lamenting loss, and the process of acclimation to the limits of distance. In the final movement the poems reach an acceptance that the members of any relationship must remain individual and that there is joy in this separation.

The collection tries to learn from the liminal space between together and apart, between refusal and acceptance. Together, the poems argue that balance is not a condition but an unending process of adaptation, a constant shifting, a dance. The manuscript tends toward equilibrium, seeking balance in distance. Khalil Gibran’s frequently-invoked “On Marriage” insists that those in love “stand together yet not too near together: / For the pillars of the temple stand apart”. Radio Spring explores the difficulty of complying with that demand.

With motifs of horticulture and the body, coupled with attention to the melodic composition of the poems, I hope the collection plays like a radio placed in a backyard garden. The pieces are stylistically and tonally varied and have no shortage of garden flowers: I hope moving from poem to poem feels like adjusting the tuning dial and listening to a new song play over the fragrances of the blooms.

Keywords

[Radio Spring]

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | Fine Arts

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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