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Title: FRACTURES.
Creator: Hastings, Elizabeth, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: A stoplight at night. A dim bedroom. The smell of smoke and loss in summer. In winter, the crackle of snow underfoot, the city cold as a lavender planet. These are the settings within Fractures, and it is to these backdrops that the conflicts of the poems' speakers bare themselves. In the glow of these places, the truth of fractures, the gaps and slivers within us all, are illuminated. Below the visible wholeness of life lies a masked truth, the truth of a world that exists as a...
Show moreA stoplight at night. A dim bedroom. The smell of smoke and loss in summer. In winter, the crackle of snow underfoot, the city cold as a lavender planet. These are the settings within Fractures, and it is to these backdrops that the conflicts of the poems' speakers bare themselves. In the glow of these places, the truth of fractures, the gaps and slivers within us all, are illuminated. Below the visible wholeness of life lies a masked truth, the truth of a world that exists as a collection of fragments, of lives, of stories that connect, intersect, and sometimes overlap to create the tapestry of life as we know it. Each of us, in our own way, is fractured: in our minds, bodies, families, or relationships. And yet we live with these breakages, embrace them, even, because these splinters--personalities, moments, obstacles--are what make us whole. Fractures is a collection of poems that examines these pieces that characterize human life. The events and speakers in this manuscript are fictional, yet, like all fiction, they reflect some remnants of reality, some recognizable truths of ourselves stitched throughout. Each section of the collection can be viewed as a separate fracture, and each poem may also be a fracture. Some poems are broken even further: within stanzas, within lines, sometimes within the mind of the speaker. The poems do not tell a linear story, but rather tell bits of stories that often overlap. These narrative gaps too are indicative of a fracture as they mirror the disconnect, both physical and emotional, that frequently occurs in the stories of one's life. The sections of Fractures address different topics, ranging from loss to love to self destruction. The speakers are linked by a sense of searching, a self-awareness of being splintered, and, as one poem states, of recognizing a "hunger" for something more. One has lost a dear friend; another destroys her body in a quest for beauty. Some reflect on their families. Others mourn for lovers past, while one clings to a fleeting moment of love in its perfection. Just as the body suffers its broken bones that heal with time, so too these speakers suffer rifts that mend but are not forgotten. In this way, Fractures is a dissection, an X-ray of its speakers, each break a lit scar, fluorescent on the page.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: CFE0001651, ucf:47236
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0001651

Title: MOUSIKê.
Creator: Moorhead, Robin, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Music Etymology: Middle English musik, from Anglo-French musike, from Latin musica, from Greek Mousikê, any art presided over by the Muses, especially music. This collection is a celebration of imagination, music, and everyday experience. It is a constant quest for new and different. It tackles the simplest of moments, "Tai Chi on the Porch," with the most complex, "Death-Sitting," it pulls from the abstract, "The Secret Lives of Requiems," and the concrete, "Driving Past Orange Groves...
Show moreMusic Etymology: Middle English musik, from Anglo-French musike, from Latin musica, from Greek Mousikê, any art presided over by the Muses, especially music. This collection is a celebration of imagination, music, and everyday experience. It is a constant quest for new and different. It tackles the simplest of moments, "Tai Chi on the Porch," with the most complex, "Death-Sitting," it pulls from the abstract, "The Secret Lives of Requiems," and the concrete, "Driving Past Orange Groves on My Way to Work." Influences on this collection are W.S. Merwin, for his imagination and foundness of language, Philip Levine, because of his external vision and voice, and Kim Addonizio, who's awareness of music is a content presence in her poetry. Mousikê seeks to capture the music of all moments and translate them into language that is ripe with vibrant sound, imagery, and voice. An eclectic collection, the body of work unifies itself around how sound helps to define experience. Each poem is its own endeavor, its own voice, its own entity, and while the separate poems each stress their own individuality, Mousikê unites them to create a varied mix of work in which Moorhead constantly explores herself as a poet.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: CFE0002497, ucf:47688
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002497

Title: Two Tongues.
Creator: Ghannam, Lana, Thaxton, Terry, Kesler, Russ, Stap, Donald, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: "Two Tongues" is a collection of poems that explores the societal norms that mixes American and Middle Eastern cultures. The use of sensory language empowers the speaker of these poems to break the barrier between both cultures and mold them into one significant place(-)the individual. Within these poems lie the exploration of identity(-)both religiously and culturally(-)through the speaker's family upbringing and her social settings, as well as the use of spoken language.This collection...
Show more"Two Tongues" is a collection of poems that explores the societal norms that mixes American and Middle Eastern cultures. The use of sensory language empowers the speaker of these poems to break the barrier between both cultures and mold them into one significant place(-)the individual. Within these poems lie the exploration of identity(-)both religiously and culturally(-)through the speaker's family upbringing and her social settings, as well as the use of spoken language.This collection attempts to convey the struggles of a bicultural background through use of pure metaphor and sound play where language(-)Arabic and English(-)is an essential element to the collection. Contained within these lyrical poems is the hope for acceptance, love, and humanity, and that all lands will unite as a common people. The speaker searches for self in each poem with an insatiable curiosity, one that will no longer fear expression.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: CFE0005619, ucf:50221
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005619

Title: Forced Outage.
Creator: Jackson, Caitlin, Stap, Donald, Kesler, Thomas, Roney, Lisa, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: ABSTRACTThis collection of poems explores an inner emotional life contrasted with a plodding existence inthe external world of day to day business as usual. The poems embrace the importance of notingmoments of beauty and grace in an otherwise bland landscape, and mourn the difficulty ofholding onto such moments as life moves forward.These poems lead the way down bumpy emotional roads and explore the struggle to makehuman connections in simple circumstances. Most important, they attempt to...
Show moreABSTRACTThis collection of poems explores an inner emotional life contrasted with a plodding existence inthe external world of day to day business as usual. The poems embrace the importance of notingmoments of beauty and grace in an otherwise bland landscape, and mourn the difficulty ofholding onto such moments as life moves forward.These poems lead the way down bumpy emotional roads and explore the struggle to makehuman connections in simple circumstances. Most important, they attempt to capture the beautyof the connections that come from these struggles, and the triumphant promise that we are notalone.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: CFE0004694, ucf:49850
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004694

Title: An Uncurling Hand: Isolation in Public Places.
Creator: Lundblom, Kimberly, Thaxton, Terry, Stap, Donald, Hubbard, Susan, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: The creative thesis "An Uncurling Hand: Isolation in Public Places" is a collection of poetry concerned with ideological dichotomies: conventional domestication against the exotic, class divides and its implications for identity, and most importantly the feeling of isolation even when surrounded by others.
Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: CFE0004130, ucf:49111
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004130

Title: FIVE KINGDOMS.
Creator: Groom, Kelle, Stap, Don, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: GROOM, KELLE . Five Kingdoms. (Under the direction of Don Stap.) Five Kingdoms is a collection of 55 poems in three sections. The title refers to the five kingdoms of life, encompassing every living thing. Section I explores political themes and addresses subjects that reach across a broad expanse of time--from the oldest bones of a child and the oldest map of the world to the bombing of Fallujah in the current Iraq war. Connections between physical and metaphysical worlds are examined. The...
Show moreGROOM, KELLE . Five Kingdoms. (Under the direction of Don Stap.) Five Kingdoms is a collection of 55 poems in three sections. The title refers to the five kingdoms of life, encompassing every living thing. Section I explores political themes and addresses subjects that reach across a broad expanse of time--from the oldest bones of a child and the oldest map of the world to the bombing of Fallujah in the current Iraq war. Connections between physical and metaphysical worlds are examined. The focus narrows from the world to the city in section II. The theme of shelter is important to these poems, as is the act of being a flâneur. The search for shelter, physical and spiritual, is explored. The third section of Five Kingdoms narrows further to the individual. Political themes recur, as do ekphrastic elements, in the examination of individual lives and the search for physical and metaphysical shelter. The title poem "Five Kingdoms," was written on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. This non-narrative poem is composed of a series of questions for the reader regarding personal and national security. It is a political poem that uses a language of fear and superstition to question what we are willing to sacrifice to be safe and what "safety" means. The poem ends with a call to action: "Before you break in two, categorize/the five kingdoms, count all the living things." The poems in this manuscript are a kind of counting that pays attention to the things of the world through praise and elegy. The poems in Five Kingdoms are indebted to my reading of many poets, in particular Michael Burkard, Carolyn Forché, Brenda Hillman, Tony Hoagland, Kenneth Koch, Philip Levine, Denise Levertov, Jane Mead, W.S. Merwin, Pablo Neruda, Frank O'Hara, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, and Mark Strand.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: CFE0002405, ucf:47742
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002405

Title: BURIED IN THE DUST.
Creator: Farrell, Jessica, Kesler, Thomas, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: In July 2012, I left America for the first time to travel to Madurai, India, for a month-long journalism internship. The inspiration for the poetry in this work is deeply rooted in my experiences while in India, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Not knowing why I chose India to travel to for my first time abroad, I realized much later that I needed to be there in order to transition into the next stage of my life. I always wanted to experience what life was like without the amenities the...
Show moreIn July 2012, I left America for the first time to travel to Madurai, India, for a month-long journalism internship. The inspiration for the poetry in this work is deeply rooted in my experiences while in India, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Not knowing why I chose India to travel to for my first time abroad, I realized much later that I needed to be there in order to transition into the next stage of my life. I always wanted to experience what life was like without the amenities the Western world is accustomed to (hot showers, washers and dryers, reliable electricity, etc.). Through isolating myself from the familiar I woke up to a simpler, happier perspective on life. This isolation also stirred mixed emotions in me that I wasn't aware of until I began writing about the experience in these poems. The feeling of being watched by everyone was common and sometimes frightening or disturbing. This vulnerability was uncomfortable even though the experiences and realizations I had outweighed the negativity while I was in India. The intent of this thesis is to explore how I've grown and what I took from the trip while comparing my Indian experience to life before and after my visit. With unconventional structural elements, I set out to put life and movement on the page to represent the chaotic, beautiful India and the emotions that carried the weight of each poem. Just from one month of being surrounded by strangers who stared with stone eyes, a language I didn't understand and memories of a life I didn't miss as much as I thought I would, this thesis follows the imaginative perceptions of a sleeping person through her evolution into a waking life.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: CFH0004390, ucf:44980
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004390

Title: I Have Questions.
Creator: Matejowsky, Lorena, Thaxton, Terry, Stap, Donald, Uttich, Laurie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: The poems in this thesis explore mid-life feminism, family, mental illness via anxiety and panic, identities of southern girlhood/womanhood, and the challenges of a social media saturated life. Mothering plays a large part in many of these poems, both embracing it and confronting gendered expectations about it. Telling the truth is explored through poems about white women's complicity in racist systems in the southern United States and how being quiet about it benefits us. Fear and the myriad...
Show moreThe poems in this thesis explore mid-life feminism, family, mental illness via anxiety and panic, identities of southern girlhood/womanhood, and the challenges of a social media saturated life. Mothering plays a large part in many of these poems, both embracing it and confronting gendered expectations about it. Telling the truth is explored through poems about white women's complicity in racist systems in the southern United States and how being quiet about it benefits us. Fear and the myriad ways it has manifested in my life is a common thread in this work, especially the fears that accompanied white girls growing up in the Southern U.S. during a time of shifting societal roles and cultural values. The speaker in these poems both deny and celebrate the cultural, political, and environmental influences that shaped her early years. As a feminist poet in mid-life with a teenaged daughter and a teen and pre-teen son, I have a tenuous relationship with the influence of mass media. Controlling screen-time for my children and monitoring my own intake of news, braggadocio and ex-boyfriends on social media is a constant, anxiety laden burden. I am more comfortable in a world that does not always revisit itself. I have spent years trying to erase the effects of Texas big hair, provocative clothing, alcohol, and sexually explicit music, video and advertising on my life. Other times I yearn for an escape back. Poetry challenges me to look backward with bravery. These poems reflect the forces of memory and modernism that both limit and liberate modern women. In Trump's America where women are demeaned and silenced through populist rhetoric and legislation, it is more important than ever to magnify female, truth-telling voices and this collection is intended to contribute to positive change.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: CFE0007499, ucf:52652
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007499

Title: Instant Conductors.
Creator: Petralia, Mary, Kesler, Russ, Nwakanma, Obi, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Instant Conductors is a collection of poems meant to engage the reader in conversation about the imperfect nature of the world in relation to the imperfect nature of readerly experience. Walt Whitman wrote, (")I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop / they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.(") And so the things on these pages are intent on transmitting what one experiences in the minutiae of memory and routine: the sounds that surround a blackwater...
Show moreInstant Conductors is a collection of poems meant to engage the reader in conversation about the imperfect nature of the world in relation to the imperfect nature of readerly experience. Walt Whitman wrote, (")I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop / they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.(") And so the things on these pages are intent on transmitting what one experiences in the minutiae of memory and routine: the sounds that surround a blackwater tidepool, what one imagines happens behind the closed doors of the friendly neighbors, or what's heard in the whispers of an elderly man sitting in a waiting room. These pieces are situated along the spectrum of narrative and lyric, between self and other, around various speakers and listeners. They flow through the sensors of Florida swamp, pray to the train ride of some nebulous god or lack thereof, and comment on the artifice of social media. They visit the transient nature of relationships and interrogate how one comes to know, or not know, the self. These pieces speak to old form and new verse. They touch on place, and time, and timelessness. They attempt to reimagine the negative space of individual, sometimes muddled, histories, into some understandable or at least familiar, organic, whole. Universal truths or no, these are the electric currents of language. They are hazardous. They are harmless. They are instances and instants.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: CFE0005987, ucf:50774
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005987

Title: The Sleepless Ouroboros.
Creator: Bohl, Grant, Stap, Donald, Thaxton, Terry, Uttich, Laurie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: The poems in The Sleepless Ouroboros are about the obsessions which come to define a person. These obsessions are memories, dreams, objects or ideas that cannot be separated from the whole. Poems such as (")Thinking of Big Moe(") and (")It Begins with a Fox(") grapple with the limitations of memory, while poems such as (")The Python(") and (")Heirloom(") counterpoint memory's weakness with the supposed permanence of physical artifacts. Depression and anger, the anxieties of identity and...
Show moreThe poems in The Sleepless Ouroboros are about the obsessions which come to define a person. These obsessions are memories, dreams, objects or ideas that cannot be separated from the whole. Poems such as (")Thinking of Big Moe(") and (")It Begins with a Fox(") grapple with the limitations of memory, while poems such as (")The Python(") and (")Heirloom(") counterpoint memory's weakness with the supposed permanence of physical artifacts. Depression and anger, the anxieties of identity and displacement, and representations of the people and animals that leave lasting impact on a life are all addressed as vital components of the completed speaker. In the middle of the collection (")The Mad Scientist Sleeps(") and (")Through Milk and Oil(") surround (")Insomnia and Autocannibalism,(") reaching the core of the speaker's identity throughout the collection, imagined, present, or past. The collection, like its namesake the ouroboros, ends in the same place it begins. This cyclical motion through the collection seeks to bring the varying voices throughout into a complete, if conflicted whole.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: CFE0006568, ucf:51345
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006568

Title: According to the Gospel of Haunted Women.
Creator: Roney, Judith, Kesler, Russ, Nwakanma, Obi, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: According to the Gospel of Haunted Women is a collection of seventy-five poems divided into four sections. The voices speaking within, are, indeed haunted by varying definitions. They bespeak complex, troubled emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety, yet work towards expressions of courage. The dead and the living are cajoled and accused, while others are provided a format through which they may be heard long after their mouths have closed. The poems are arranged in four sections. Section...
Show moreAccording to the Gospel of Haunted Women is a collection of seventy-five poems divided into four sections. The voices speaking within, are, indeed haunted by varying definitions. They bespeak complex, troubled emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety, yet work towards expressions of courage. The dead and the living are cajoled and accused, while others are provided a format through which they may be heard long after their mouths have closed. The poems are arranged in four sections. Section I, (")We Begin,(") consists of memoir pieces from the poet's early life. Section II, (")We Speak,(") is a dedicated space for the voices of both the famous and the obscure. The third section, (")We Migrate,(") gathers an eclectic assortment of female speakers expressing geographical and mental transference, interweaving personal migratory poems of the author. The final section, (")We Hunger,(") returns to personal pieces that speak from a more settled, albeit still haunted, vantage point.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: CFE0005703, ucf:50149
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005703

Title: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUEHOW POETRY IN SCIENCE CAN HELP STUDENTS LEARN SOMETHING NEW.
Creator: Casselman, Kimberly, Everett, Robert, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This study was an attempt to examine how poetry integrated with science could assist eighth graders in the memorization of key science vocabulary words. Furthermore, it would investigate if student attitude, interest, and motivation would improve with the use of the poetry. Instruction was adjusted to implement poetry into astronomy lessons. Memorization activities such as poems, chanting, and repetition were used to help students remember the vocabulary and the definitions. Pre/post tests...
Show moreThis study was an attempt to examine how poetry integrated with science could assist eighth graders in the memorization of key science vocabulary words. Furthermore, it would investigate if student attitude, interest, and motivation would improve with the use of the poetry. Instruction was adjusted to implement poetry into astronomy lessons. Memorization activities such as poems, chanting, and repetition were used to help students remember the vocabulary and the definitions. Pre/post tests were used to interpret if the poetry did assist in the memorization of the astronomy vocabulary. Science interest surveys and science attitude surveys were used to interpret if the use of the poetry helped to increase student interests in and attitudes toward science. This study was intended to be a first step toward proving how poetry could benefit students in the areas of memorization, attitude, and interest of science; and if successful, perhaps could be used to assist in other subjects as well.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: CFE0002677, ucf:48203
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002677

Title: Romantic Ideals in Contemporary Folk Music.
Creator: Schwartz, Brett, Murphy, Patrick, Kamrath, Mark, Meehan, Kevin, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This thesis examines contemporary folk music from no earlier than 2006, specifically music of the bands The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver. Providing a close reading of select songs, I prove that modern music is seeing a revival in the Romantic Era and Transcendentalist ideals and philosophy. The works and philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), John Keats (1795-1821), as well as Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803...
Show moreThis thesis examines contemporary folk music from no earlier than 2006, specifically music of the bands The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver. Providing a close reading of select songs, I prove that modern music is seeing a revival in the Romantic Era and Transcendentalist ideals and philosophy. The works and philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), John Keats (1795-1821), as well as Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), among others and their critics are all considered for points of comparison to the modern lyrics. The reason for this revival is considered in the conclusion chapter in terms of why there is a reaction against the technology driven culture in favor of one that romanticizes the thoughts and ideas of the Romantic era writers, their emphasis on nature, emotion, and the imagination which opposed the logic, reason, and technology of the industrial revolution, just as today there is a reaction to the alienation caused by technology.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: CFE0005708, ucf:50147
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005708

Title: THE NEW GIRL.
Creator: Meredith, Angela Marie, Stap, Don, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: The New Girl is a collection of poems in which the poet assumes a direct, unfeigned voice. These rhythmic poems cover the deeply personal to the universal and social. The body is presented as a record of experiences both good and bad. Feminist issues pertainingto marriage, work, and sexuality are explored. Whether the poem is about a personal relationship or some aspect of society, it is likely to be multi-dimensional and suggest a duality. Overall, the poems are rooted in the spiritual and...
Show moreThe New Girl is a collection of poems in which the poet assumes a direct, unfeigned voice. These rhythmic poems cover the deeply personal to the universal and social. The body is presented as a record of experiences both good and bad. Feminist issues pertainingto marriage, work, and sexuality are explored. Whether the poem is about a personal relationship or some aspect of society, it is likely to be multi-dimensional and suggest a duality. Overall, the poems are rooted in the spiritual and attempt to relate, with holistic honesty, a sense of reverence for the impure parts of life.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: CFE0000035, ucf:46107
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0000035

Title: ELIZABETH BISHOP AND HER WOMEN:COUNTERING LOSS, LOVE, AND LANGUAGE THROUGH BISHOP'S HOMOSOCIAL CONTINUUM.
Creator: Rogers, Donna, Smith, Ernest, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This thesis examines Elizabeth Bishop's seemingly understated and yet nuanced poetry with a specific focus on loss, love, and language through domesticity to create a poetic home. In this sense, home offers security for a displaced orphan and lesbian, moving from filial to amorous love, as well as the literary home for a poet who struggled for critical recognition. Further, juxtaposing the familiar with the strange, Bishop situates her speaker in a construction of artificial and natural...
Show moreThis thesis examines Elizabeth Bishop's seemingly understated and yet nuanced poetry with a specific focus on loss, love, and language through domesticity to create a poetic home. In this sense, home offers security for a displaced orphan and lesbian, moving from filial to amorous love, as well as the literary home for a poet who struggled for critical recognition. Further, juxtaposing the familiar with the strange, Bishop situates her speaker in a construction of artificial and natural boundaries that break down across her topography and represent loss through the multiple female figures that permeate her poems to convey the uncertainty one experiences with homelessness. In order to establish home, Bishop sets her female relationships on a continuum as mother, aunt, grandmother, and lovers are equitably represented with similar tropes. In essence, what draws these women together remains their collective and familiar duty as potential caretaker, which is contrasted by their unusual absence in the respective poems that figure them. Contrary to the opinion most scholars hold, Bishop's reticence was a calculated device that progressed her speaker(s) toward moments of self discovery. In an attempt to uncover her voice, her place in the literary movements, and her very identity, critics narrowly define Bishop's vision by fracturing her identity and positing reductive readings of her work. By choosing multiple dichotomies that begin with a marginalized speaker and the centered women on her continuum, the paradox of Bishop's poetry eludes some readers as they try to queer her or simply reduce her to impersonal and reticent, while a holistic approach is needed to uncover the genesis of Bishop's poetic progression. To be sure, Bishop's women conflate into the collective image of loss, absence, and abandonment on Bishop's homosocial continuum as a way to achieve catharsis. Bishop's concern with unconditional love, coupled with the continual threat of abandonment she contends with coursing through her work, gives credence to the homosocial continuum that is driven by loss and love with the perpetual need to create a language to house Bishop from the painful memories of rejection. Bishop situates her speaker(s) in the margins, since it is at the center when the pain of loss is brought into light, to allow her fluid selves release from the prison loss creates. By reading her work through the lenses of orphan, lesbian, and female poet, the progression of her homosocial continuum, as I envision it, is revealed. It is through this continuum that Bishop comes to terms with loss and abandonment, while creating a speaking subject that grows with each poem. Without her continuum of powerful female relationships, Bishop's progression as a poet would be far less revealing. Indeed, defining herself through negation, Bishop's sense of homelessness is uncovered in juxtaposition to her centered female subjects, and I delve into these contestations of space/place as well as her figurations of home/ homelessness to discern Bishop's poetic craft as she channeled the painful details of her past, thus creating her "one art."
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: CFE0002044, ucf:47601
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002044

Title: AND ITS ALSO THE SMELL OF LAUNDRY.
Creator: Miranda, Rachel, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This collection of poems brings to life the idea that in a poet's world, every day life and every single occurrence is a possible subject. Included are works brought on from the worst of circumstances, the youngest of memories, the happiest moments, and even the simplest of thoughts. The collection is autobiographical and reflective, a re-creation of the events taken place with the addition of present knowledge. The work here gives proof to the idea of cohesion between content and art form -...
Show moreThis collection of poems brings to life the idea that in a poet's world, every day life and every single occurrence is a possible subject. Included are works brought on from the worst of circumstances, the youngest of memories, the happiest moments, and even the simplest of thoughts. The collection is autobiographical and reflective, a re-creation of the events taken place with the addition of present knowledge. The work here gives proof to the idea of cohesion between content and art form - it proves the notion that how something is being said is just as, if not more, important than what is being said itself. Concrete imagery full of sensory details, a distinct voice given through language and rhythm, and passionate, truthful emotion are only some of the specific interests found in the following pages. and it's also the smell of laundry is a collection that celebrates the cohesion of content and form, interweaves experience and art itself. This collection embraces experience, gives reason to the past, and gives strength to the present. It is autobiographical, written from painful, colorful, miserable, ecstatic, and even mundane moments. But it is also carefully crafted, true to the form, and embodies perfectly the idea of art itself as it is the carefully constructed form and tools within each piece that bring to life the experiences themselves.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: CFH0004191, ucf:44850
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004191

Title: FORMALITY.
Creator: Emley, Bryce, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Of the many aspects of the composition of poetry, the most common component of the form involves emotional response. There is an infinite number of ways to write a poem, and likewise an infinite number of forms which a poem can be structured according to. In writing this collection of poems composing my thesis, I set out to write poetry in as many ways as I could to explore how different forms, devices, voices, points of view, sounds, tones, and as many other variables as I could think of...
Show moreOf the many aspects of the composition of poetry, the most common component of the form involves emotional response. There is an infinite number of ways to write a poem, and likewise an infinite number of forms which a poem can be structured according to. In writing this collection of poems composing my thesis, I set out to write poetry in as many ways as I could to explore how different forms, devices, voices, points of view, sounds, tones, and as many other variables as I could think of affect poetry as stimulus. The poems in this collection cover a range of classic poetic forms and styles as well as variations of free verse and contemporary forms. My hope is that the readers of these poems will be able to experience a wide range of emotional responses and gain the same insight into the vast abilities inherent in poetry that I gained in writing them.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: CFH0003783, ucf:44735
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0003783

Title: Because You Are Beautiful and Dead.
Creator: Amey, Yvonne, Thaxton, Terry, Stap, Donald, Uttich, Laurie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: The poems in Because You Are Beautiful and Dead deal with dysfunctional people, substance abuse, loss, and death and dying. The poems also highlight the struggle of the poet/speaker finding her place in a hideous world, which, paradoxically, she really doesn't want to belong. The poems are influenced by the playful and sad imagery and subject matter of poet Matthew Dickman. These poems, like Dickman's, are assessable and quirky. Michael Earl Craig and Terrance Hayes are two other influences....
Show moreThe poems in Because You Are Beautiful and Dead deal with dysfunctional people, substance abuse, loss, and death and dying. The poems also highlight the struggle of the poet/speaker finding her place in a hideous world, which, paradoxically, she really doesn't want to belong. The poems are influenced by the playful and sad imagery and subject matter of poet Matthew Dickman. These poems, like Dickman's, are assessable and quirky. Michael Earl Craig and Terrance Hayes are two other influences. Hayes' work is artistic and experimental. Michael Earl Craig's poems have a brilliance that isn't fueled in its complex or radical subject matter, but by the ability to see into the human condition in its most simple form. These poems are interested in language and form. The speaker in it often wants to tell someone I am sorry that I have forgotten you. You are still here, inside my poems. The poems bring people back to life. Sometimes these people are symbolic(-)not any specific person(-)but rather a representative of loss. Mostly the speaker wants to highlight the absurd and dysfunctional nature of humankind without any need to offer a remedy. Humans are predictable narcissists, they mess up their children, talk too much, and simply annoy. These poems are not predictable, boring, or always so fundamentally normal.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: CFE0006556, ucf:51335
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006556

Title: (In)Tangible Things.
Creator: Skaryd, Ryan, Uttich, Laurie, Roney, Lisa, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: (In)Tangible Things is a collection of memoir essays and poems that examines loss, pain, and identity. Many pieces explore familial ties through separation, secrecy, and divorce, while other stories and poems observe the author's connection to drag culture, sexuality, eating disorders, and time itself. Using techniques such as framing devices, backwards storytelling, and delineated narrative, the author invites the reader to experience memories and moments from his past that show consistency...
Show more(In)Tangible Things is a collection of memoir essays and poems that examines loss, pain, and identity. Many pieces explore familial ties through separation, secrecy, and divorce, while other stories and poems observe the author's connection to drag culture, sexuality, eating disorders, and time itself. Using techniques such as framing devices, backwards storytelling, and delineated narrative, the author invites the reader to experience memories and moments from his past that show consistency and change, betrayal and forgiveness.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: CFE0006661, ucf:51215
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006661

Title: The Poems You Don't Own.
Creator: Reinhardt, Emma, Thaxton, Terry, Stap, Donald, Uttich, Laurie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: The Poems You Don't Own is a collection of poems whose speakers explore the journey from the simplistic perspective of childhood to the confusion of adolescence to the first experiences of sexuality, heartbreak, and grief, examining the religious, societal, and gender expectations that influence those experiences. The collection's reverse-chronological order allows readers to travel back through the many experiences that shape a present moment. In poems such as (")The Game of Life,(") the...
Show moreThe Poems You Don't Own is a collection of poems whose speakers explore the journey from the simplistic perspective of childhood to the confusion of adolescence to the first experiences of sexuality, heartbreak, and grief, examining the religious, societal, and gender expectations that influence those experiences. The collection's reverse-chronological order allows readers to travel back through the many experiences that shape a present moment. In poems such as (")The Game of Life,(") the speaker considers the gender roles that begin to influence our perception of relationships from a young age, while poems such as (")What to Know Before Writing about Heartbreak(") explore how societal perceptions can seek to control the very expression of emotional pain. The speakers struggle with masculine and feminine in an effort to unravel the association between emotional expressiveness and feminine (")weakness(") as well as reveal the harmful consequences of perceiving emotional repression as a feature of masculine (")strength.(") Amid these gender explorations, the collection often returns to speakers seeking to understand the heartbreak of failed relationships and almost-loves. By probing this universal experience, these poems chronicle the loss, confusion, and reclaiming of identity as the speakers rediscover that their story was never about (")you.(")
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: CFE0007521, ucf:52628
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007521

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