First Advisor

John Beer

Term of Graduation

Spring 2024

Date of Publication

7-17-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

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

Department

English

Language

English

Subjects

crown shyness, inheritance, intergenerational, nebraska, poetry, queer

Physical Description

1 online resource (v, 83 pages)

Abstract

Crown Shy explores the ripple effects of inheritance--somatic, psychological, and material--and how such inheritance constellates into our adult relations and relating. In three parts, the text undermines nuclear family imaginings, first by pulling them out by the root, and later through radical practice, formal constraint, and syntactic ambiguity. By studying the natural world--the organizing principles of trees, insects, and flowers--Crown Shy attempts to glean strategy from evidence of what is already thriving. Reluctantly lyrical, the text quietly deplores the ramifications of commercial agriculture, including the speaker’s own family farm and ancestral homestead. With the weight of this origin point, Crown Shy treads warily into a present-tense relationship system which both pushes up against but also re-enacts former family systems, violence, and myth.

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).

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42428

Available for download on Thursday, July 17, 2025

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