Scarecrow is a dissertation in two parts. It begins with a book-length manuscript of original poetry that explores the uncanny process of inventing our many selves and the consequences of performing these selves under real or imagined scrutiny. The poems extend the lyric’s introspective nature by suggesting that this continual process of invention and re-invention is never certain and creates only projections – various transparent approximations of whom the speakers think they should be. The speakers’ endeavors to find something solid and immutable about themselves create the underlying tension in the manuscript. Because of the shifting nature of the self in this work, the poems rarely rely on the narrative I as a focal point and instead turn to unexpected juxtaposed topics and imagery largely taken from a palette of natural and scientific interests. From particle physics and M-theory to the contradictions that are California, the poems of Scarecrow operate under the belief that as we strive to discover the nature of the universe around us, we learn the nature of ourselves.
Complementing the manuscript is a scholarly essay titled “Transgression and Transformation: Racial Negotiation in Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Brazil’ Poems.” This essay investigates the poetic techniques Elizabeth Bishop devised in the “Brazil” section of her book Questions of Travel to scrutinize how racial identities were constructed and positioned in postcolonial Brazil.