First Advisor

John Beer

Term of Graduation

Spring 2023

Date of Publication

7-25-2023

Document Type

Closed Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Creative Writing

Department

English

Language

English

Subjects

Ex-church members -- Psychology -- Poetry, God -- Omnipresence -- Poetry

DOI

10.15760/etd.3586

Physical Description

1 online resource (iv, 62 pages)

Abstract

The letting describes a bodily and emotional metamorphosis in the aftermath of the speaker's traumatic separation from pentecostal christianity with its emphasis on a singular and certain god. These poems reckon with the question, What are the possibilities of embodiment in the wake of stolen agency? In an attempt to fill the hole left by god's absence, the poems turn to the natural world, its flowers, fungi, and cycles of life and death, as well as various forms of divination to ask how the hybridity of the grotesque (human merged with non-human forms) can widen the possibilities of embodiment and healing. Through unfolding layers of knowledge, intuition, uncertainty, and darkness, the poems reach toward what must remain fundamentally mysterious: the relative presence and/or absence of god; the boundaries between self and other; the holding of grief in the body; and the question of how to know anything at all.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

This thesis is only available to students, faculty and staff at PSU.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40585

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