Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

First Committee Member

Claudia Keelan

Second Committee Member

Donald Revell

Third Committee Member

Megan Becker-Leckrone

Fourth Committee Member

Maile Chapman

Fifth Committee Member

Lynn Comella

Number of Pages

58

Abstract

Sight Words is a collection of poems that questions the image as the central unit of meaning in poetry. Sight words is a lyric bildungsroman, that traces the process of metaphysical alienation that an individual undergoes in the postmodern world. The speaker is exposed to an overabundance of meaning that the visual world transmits and as the order of language deteriorates, meaning multiplies and falters. The language and poetics of Sight Words struggles to reconcile the disconnect between visual language and spoken language. Every missed communication points to a denial of access to the self, which the speaker apprehends as a death of self. The creative process of this book takes as its inspiration Guy Debord’s Theory of the Dérive, after which I recorded the fragmented and erratic changes in ambience of my sojourns through the city in which I live. Sight Words pits this death of the author against the Dérive’s root in physicality in order to make the philosophical claim that dualism of body and mind is spiritually fatal. With this truth at its center, the broader implication is of the fugitivity and dispossessed status of the artist and art itself in the contemporary world.

Disciplines

Creative Writing

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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