Department: Creative Writing/Poetry ![[clear]](close-x.png "Remove this limiter")
21 matches in the database.
These are records: 1 - 21.
1.
Adams, Laural Lea.
What the Apple Wants.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis features poems in three sections, each occupying what the author…
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▼ This thesis features poems in three sections, each occupying what the author perceives as an increasing distance from the direct consideration of epistemological and ontological concerns. In Section I, several poems are contemplations of the ways that organic shape, specifically the spiral, can inform both the structure of human experience and the structure of the poem. Poems in Section II still consider how forms, particularly those in language, can mediate between person and world and give rise to an iterative sense of self. Many of the poems in this section engage the imagination in renderings of the fantastic in contrast to the poems in Section III which feature figurative personas with a presence in the figurative world of the poem.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Language arts
Keywords: poetry; self; organic shape and structure of human experience
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2.
Bloomfield, Chris L.
In the Skin: Poems.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► "In the Skin" is a collection of poems where a reader will…
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▼ "In the Skin" is a collection of poems where a reader will crawl into the narrator's life experiences and interpretations of those experiences. After reading this collection, the reader should reach an understanding of human behavior on an individual level, and how that individual comes to terms with his life he is living or not living.
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Sharona.
Subjects: Literature
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3.
Brannon, Garvice M.
This Fistful of Quiet.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► This poetry collection began to form around the concept of space—the space…
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▼ This poetry collection began to form around the concept of space—the space between people in relationships, the space occupied by family, and the space of the expanding mind. However, this exploration of space is not without exploration into the manifestations for containment. What does it mean to be contained? How does one alter confinement? These poems attempt to answer such questions.
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Sharona.
Subjects: Fine Arts
Keywords: light; quiet; green; sidewalk
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4.
Buchen, Callista Mary.
The Bloody Planet.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► A collection of original poetry by Callista Buchen. Without sections, the intuitive…
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▼ A collection of original poetry by Callista Buchen. Without sections, the intuitive thesis is meant to be experienced one poem to the next. Occasional blank pages offer soft pauses that allow the reader to linger over the emotional rise and fall of the poems, much like the conductor’s baton posed at the apex between symphonic movements. Opening with “Masterwork,” the poet outlines a celebratory process of building and making, in both art and relationship, which gives the rest of the collection shape and purpose. To that end, as a means to enact this process, the complete collection presents pieces on a variety of themes using different forms, including the villanelle, free and blank verse, and prose poetry, all ordered and linked through mood and voice, as well as a return to cosmic imagery. Scattered among poems considering time, mystery, and the mundane, meditations on planets act as touchstones. These planet pieces look outward, to the cosmos, as a way to look back at the individual and humanity, as a way to make sense of Earthly living. The assortment of poems throughout the thesis juxtaposes the gnomic and the accessible, the logical and the imagined, in contexts and orders that intend to re-vision accepted ways of thinking, categorizing, remembering, and being. An sound-conscious current underscores the collection, as does a celebration of language, potential, and emotion, manifested in lush description and ending in a call for further creation, further building.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
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5.
Cohoon, Nikkita Dolores.
We Used Clothespins.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► In We Used Clothespins, a correspondence is built amid echoes of the…
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▼ In We Used Clothespins, a correspondence is built amid echoes of the unsaid. Objects accumulate and amass; transmutation occurs and we shrug off what remains. The poems in this manuscript attempt to scrutinize the tangible, the scuffed surface, and dig holes in the center of worlds below sea level. Process acts as a filter for seeing—through crosshatched lines, the folds of a skirt, or the tenuous stretch of a spider web, both readers and speakers are able to navigate the fields created on the page, in the mind. The poems follow a trajectory of obsession that in the end transcends into an experience that is charged by something intangible but still felt. Beginning in sections I and II, the reader is invited into an altered space that is just peripheral to our plane of existence, but entered into through a comfortable contract of interaction between the reader and the poems. Sections III and IV explore the potential for a voice to transfix and suspend disbelief; a voice that with its own power can reveal imagery and situations beyond the framework of the everyday. Drawing upon art processes, words become like materials akin to oil paints, cut paper, or watercolors. The materials are built up in layers, and sometimes examined for their sheer physicality. These processes are enacted as a means toward an acute way of seeing. Throughout, language and syntax are used in a similar way one might build up marks in a drawing to move beyond traditional narrative into an extended moment or experience.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Fine Arts; Literature
Keywords: poetry, process, arts, ekphrasis, sea level
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6.
DeArcangelis, Stephenie N.
Bottleracket.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► The poems in Bottleracket speak to the emotions, thoughts, impulses, and instincts…
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▼ The poems in Bottleracket speak to the emotions, thoughts, impulses, and instincts that all humans hold inside of themselves; the bottle (body) holds all of this in but the racket threatens to break those bounds. The racket changes form and intention with each poem; some of the themes explored here involve the body, femaleness, queerness, madness, parent-child relationships, the things contracted and learned through family, love, the wonder of nature and energy, and the nature of the soul and connectivity between humans. In some poems, the form is spastic and unyielding to poetic tradition reflecting the desperate quality of the racket, but in others, it is reserved, calmed, and dwells softly within the bottle’s bounds; here, the racket is almost resolved, is almost allowed to speak. Collectively these poems seek to traverse the boundaries of the self, and the self in connection to other selves. This thesis requires the reader to immerse themselves in each of these flashes of life, and in doing so, acknowledge the things within that society tells us should be quieted or hidden or replaced, and instead allow the racket to burst forth unabashed.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
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7.
Gentry, Angela S.
Dream Scythe.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► Dream Scythe explores the poet’s struggle with the imagination in three sections.…
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▼ Dream Scythe explores the poet’s struggle with the imagination in three sections. In Section I, “Signs of Movement,” the poet first encounters the world, family, and relationships through a creative lens. As the imagination begins to take over, Section II, “The Windless Room,” delves into the “chaos” of dysfunctional and antagonistic relationships, as well as skewed perspectives. And finally, Section III, “Gustave,” is the prose-embodiment of the imagination take-over where the poet falls in love with a two-dimensional man. Through imagistic associations and inquiries into space, dimension, and geometric shapes, these poems investigate how the human obsession to create order often initiates more chaos.
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Sharona.
Subjects: Fine Arts
Keywords: space; poetry; imagistic associations; dimension; geometric shapes; imagination; two-dimensions
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8.
Klasovsky, Stokely James.
The Sailor Did as the Devil Bade.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► The poems in this collection investigate the relationship people have with the…
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▼ The poems in this collection investigate the relationship people have with the collective experience of myth and fable, the metaphysical realm and its relationship with the individual, and the individual's interaction with the physical world. The first section re-imagines fable in “The Devil's Sooty Brother,” re-envisions Western mythology, in “Before Ariadne Wakes,” and considers the perspective of modern myth in “How to Build a Haunted House.” Metaphysical concerns are examined in the second section, where identity, causality, and philosophy of mind are addressed in poems such as “An Elegy for Zinc,” “Nexus, 9a.m.:,” and “We as Queen,” respectively. The final section considers a number of odd and unexpected tensions that arise between the self and society, as evinced in “Bob Is Resurrected in Death Metaphors” and “Chemical Sunrise.”
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Language arts
Keywords: poetry; metaphysics; myth; fairy tale; identity; creative writing
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9.
Lichtenauer, Brianna L.
the way our bones look without us.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► the way our bones look without us is a narrative that manifests…
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▼ the way our bones look without us is a narrative that manifests itself in deterioration, in erosion, in an obsessive destruction that threatens to obliterate the self. Words like bird, blue, bone, salt and glass are repeated until they are forced to transform. Other words and phrases become significant in their omission, their absence creating new meaning and forcing other words to connect and take on significance. This process of transformation and omission forces the speaker to search for new materials to make meaning, while also showing a struggle to salvage what remains. Physical white space heightens this effect on the page, and serves to inflict the isolation of the speaker on the reader until the lines of self and experience become blurred.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Literature
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10.
Lungariello, Rocco D.
All Four Limbs.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2008, Bowling Green State University
These poems tell a story.
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Sharona.
Subjects: Fine Arts; Literature
Keywords: Poetry Collection
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11.
McKinney, Bethany A.
The Long Fast.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► This collection of original poems, comprised of three parts, explores readjustment through…
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▼ This collection of original poems, comprised of three parts, explores readjustment through the formation, breakdown, and reformation of relationships, religion, and identity. The voice in these poems is that of a minimalized speaker in the act of observing, and through this act the character of the speaker is revealed through influences and interactions. The poems move through themes of change with respect to childhood, coming of age, romantic and non-romantic love, faith, and social and personal identity ultimately revealing a speaker in the process of redefining the self. In the first part, the speaker unravels an identity that no longer fits, picking apart elements of childhood, sexuality, and social conformity which progresses to a mental break for the speaker and a structural break for the work as a whole. The second part, the “Marion Mental Hospital” series, represents the pinnacle moment of readjustment when the speaker is stripped bare and must face change, which leads to the third part of reforming. The speaker must reevaluate and observe anew, resulting in not an end product, but rather the viewpoint of constant readjustment. The third part takes on a more surreal tone than the first part to keep the reader in that state of readjustment along with the speaker. The title, The Long Fast, plays on the reduced nature of the speaker, but also on the speaker giving up the old identity. The small gesture becomes an important mode of insight into how the speaker is connecting and reconnecting. The last poem ends with the gesture of covering one eye and staring upward that symbolizes the abstaining and readjustment to what is missing.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Keywords: poetry thesis; readjustment; identity; hospital
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12.
Peiffer, Emily.
The Woman You Gave Me Has Run Away.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► This collection of poems embraces the human spirit and draws parallels between…
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▼ This collection of poems embraces the human spirit and draws parallels between violence and beauty, life and death, joy and grief, and youth and age. The voices in these poems are often female, and the poems themselves capture elements of sensuality, ancestry, experience, and subtle power. The poems attempt to capture quietly rich images, tones, and themes. The title, taken from the myth of Lilith, is a quote from Adam, who complains to God when Lilith refuses to be subservient to him. The title consequently functions in several ways to enhance the collection as a whole. It creates an awareness of female ancestry and myth while making readers alert to the independence of the supposedly true first woman, the woman created before Eve. But the title can also be read as the voice of a female speaker, one who witnesses and experiences life and death throughout these poems. The poems in this collection ultimately progress through life, death, and spirituality beyond human death. The final four poems of the collection capture voices of the natural elements in attempt to bring an additional spiritual power to the human voices in the collection. The last poem contains lines such as “people appear strongest behind bars,” reflecting back to the images of restraint or domesticity in the collection and “in a word you were there all the time,” allowing readers to once again question the title and collection as a progression.
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Sharona.
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13.
Ramsey, Courtney Jade.
Tulips in Discord.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► Through simple situations like ending a bad day at the bar, going…
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▼ Through simple situations like ending a bad day at the bar, going to the theatre, and giving someone the finger to more difficult topics such as raising children, nightmares of abuse, betrayal, and loneliness, “Tulips in Discord” takes the controversial belief of Calvinism and asks the reader to ponder such topics in the acronym TULIP: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. The reader is forced into the situations and minds of characters who find they accuse God of foul play: a woman is locked outside of a room in which enchanted music is played, a sister is unable to wed based solely on her chest size, and tulips literally become slug-like needing to be removed altogether. The theological doctrines have influenced the use of word choice and line breaks within works as both of these craft techniques are extremely important. For example in the poem “One Wood and Three Iron,” the line is broken on the carefully chosen word, “just” to create the line, “I ask to close my tab. But no bill comes just” which implies that though the speaker knows it is her burden to pay the bill, grace makes it unfair. Each poem takes its reader deeper into the realization that we must pluck the tune of the TULIP acronym in such a way so that the beauty of both grace and free will are harmonized through poems of discord, where a pianist’s limbs fall off, a young man’s fingers grow eternally, and an old Adam eats an insect and calls her Eve. Our humanity is examined through the lens of grace when a child questions the reasons her mother attends church, or when a woman is so saturated in family butter, she is ready for nothing but an oven. By the end of “Tulips in Discord,” the reader is also ready to “walk out of the garden alone while the dew is still on some of the roses.”
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Sharona.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: Tulips; Calvinism; Grace; Poetry
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14.
Riggs, Nathan D.
The Death and Subsequent Decomposition of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► This collection re-imagines the the self as a mythical beast that is…
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▼ This collection re-imagines the the self as a mythical beast that is a combination of lamb and plant, the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (also known as the Borometz), a creature once thought to be the source of cotton according to various medieval accounts in Western Civilization as well as in Jewish mystical texts. The collection follows the decay of identity through the decomposition of language, voice, rhythm and poetic form, the sections separated analogous to the stages of biological decomposition. It explores the idea of identity as being structured by and for language; and as the self slowly degrades the logic and presence of external processes and laws becomes clearer and more imposing—until a rebirth occurs, by the end, and the entire process is again re-imagined. Through self-negation, the self—and, indeed, all discernible, intentional identification—is reborn again anew.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Language Arts
Keywords: vegetable lamb of tartary; identity
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15.
Rodgers, Paul Arrand.
The Mayor of Parts Unknown.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► The Mayor of Parts Unknown is a collection focusing on the notion…
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▼ The Mayor of Parts Unknown is a collection focusing on the notion of heroism, particularly the clash between society's perception of a heroic figure and that figure's often tragic reality. The poems in this collection explore the themes of loss, humility, failure, and manhood. Many of the subjects in The Mayor of Parts Unknown are real professional wrestlers, men and women who are held up to society as exaggerated examples of masculinity and femininity. The men are impossibly muscled. Their female counterparts are unnaturally beautiful. There is a level of fakery to professional wrestling beyond the common notion of it's being a fixed sport, as its competitors are rarely the alpha-males they portray on television to an audience comprised mostly of adolescent males. This heightened masculinity is what many of the poems here deal with, both the pressure it places on the in-ring performers, and the unfair expectations it places on the viewer.
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Sharona.
Keywords: pro wrestling; wrestling; poetry; poetry collection; masculinity; pop culutre
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16.
Schaefer, Thomas.
A Chronology of Error.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► A Chronology of Error is a collection of poems that follows the…
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▼ A Chronology of Error is a collection of poems that follows the journey of a young man dealing with “all things young man”, be it love, understanding, mortality, etc. Wrought by religion, family, love lost and found, and the seedy influence of some questionable characters, the reader travels along with the young man in a way that can be summed up by a word that is “silence”.
Advisors/Committee Members: Muir, Dr. Sharona.
Subjects: American literature; Gender; Literature; Personal relationships
Keywords: Poetry; religion; love
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17.
Shaner, Melissa M.
Hellacious Extensions.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► This collection of original poems features three sections examining female historical and…
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▼ This collection of original poems features three sections examining female historical and literary figures, family relationships, and mental identity. The first section examines these aspects through the voices of women of the Bible (more specifically from the book of Genesis), and is a re-imagining of their lives from their points of view. The second section features poems that focus on the fact and legend of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a sixteenth century landholder with a penchant for torturing those less fortunate than herself. Section three finishes off the Báthory poems and examines the idea of identity. In addition to the poems that are part of a series, other poems included in each section inform the reading of the series, giving an added modern impact to poems about people who lived hundreds and thousands of years ago.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Bible; Biographies; Families and Family Life; Folklore; History; Language Arts
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18.
Spiering, David E.
Crowns and Wing Nuts.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► The poems in part one of this thesis arise from observances of…
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▼ The poems in part one of this thesis arise from observances of day-to-day living. Some are based on language play and have a snappy payoff at the end. Other poems are observations leading the reader to reflect after reading them. Part two of this thesis is the kitchen object poems. These poems came from the tools I use daily to prepare my meals. These poems go from simple observations to an ecstatic revelation or they lead the reader to see the things in their kitchens in a new way.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larrisa.
Subjects: English literature
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19.
Stump, Jessica Leann.
Moon Man.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► The following collection of poems is concerned with exploring the realms of…
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▼ The following collection of poems is concerned with exploring the realms of birth, life, and death—not necessarily in that order—and also strives to touch upon the peculiar instances that exist inbetween these three states of being. Within the first section, Born Between Us, attention is given to a heterosexual relationship linking the dualities of male/female and the process it takes, the story that is generated as a result of their combination in order to create life anew—whether it be portrayed through boy/girl, he/she, mother/father, husband/wife, personified summer/winter, or grandmother/grandfather. The perception in this section steers away from the supreme act of creation—Genesis, or the idea of a body crafted from a single image—and approaches an unraveling theme of separation: first from God, then humans, and finally, life. The second section, Back to Life with Movement, is heavily focused upon death and its aftermath; the content and tone here seem to suggest an absence of a God, and yet, there are God-related references, such as Heaven and sin. What occurs after death is a highly debatable subject; it seems only natural, then, that a tug-of-war among Nature/Religion would manifest. The third section, A Body Becomes a Question, while appearing as the collection’s finale, is actually a meditation upon the aforementioned inbetweens—the uncertain paths which lie in wait beyond death and before one’s birth, and which, perhaps, blur together into a singular, undistinguishable point.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: moon; French; death; birth
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20.
Williams, David D.
Hazard signs.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► Hazard signs is a collection of poems that consists of three parts;…
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▼ Hazard signs is a collection of poems that consists of three parts; two unnamed sections that bookend a chapbook titled Swarm of babies. The poems in this manuscript attempt to engage the subconscious through exaggerated violence, absurd reality building and dream-like imagery. Inspired by surrealist thought, Hazard Signs addresses issues of material constitution, epistemology and self-determination.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Subjects: Fine Arts; Language arts; Literature
Keywords: poetry; babies; surrealism
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21.
Zinz, Jessica Dawn.
The Horse Lies Down Like a Person.
Degree: MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► A collection of original poetry by Jessica Dawn Zinz. Divided into three…
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▼ A collection of original poetry by Jessica Dawn Zinz. Divided into three sections, the poems in this collection consider the necessary relationship between memory and grief. While creating tension between what’s logical and what’s mysterious, strange, or fantastic, the collection moves readers through past memories, current moments, as well as events that have never happened outside of this poetic world. Several poems in this collection draw from the black and white photography of Sally Mann, including “Jessie and the Deer,” “Gathered Around the Ditch,” “Damaged Child” and each of the “Carousel Horse” poems. The photographs of Mann’s children are brought into the world of language in this collection in order for them to escape the trance of the camera’s flash and begin to move around again. In addition to childhood, themes of childbirth, human and animal deaths, building, as well as falling come to play poetry that is the watery surface created between narrative and lyric. In the first section of this collection, the speaker has a desire to escape moments of grief in order to gain control. In section two, the speaker begins to see the moments of grief as opportunities for discovery. In the final section of the collection, there is a sense of certainty that it is necessary to recall past grief in order to understand the present. Throughout the collection, readers consider time, what it takes to approach grief, and what it means when The Horse Lies Down Like a Person.
Advisors/Committee Members: Szporluk, Larissa.
Keywords: poetry; art; Sally Mann; ekphrasis; ekphrastic; creative writing
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