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Date Permissions Signed

5-11-2022

Date of Award

Spring 2022

Document Type

Masters Thesis (Campus-Only Access)

Department or Program Affiliation

English, Master of Fine Arts

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Wong, Jane

Second Advisor

Shipley, Ely

Third Advisor

Heim, Stefania

Abstract

Soft Bellies / Hold the Babies is a collection of poems that explores themes of aging, chronic illness, climate grief, ways of knowing, the “mother line,” and ancestral memory. The work holds grief, rage, longing, apology, praise, and delight at different turns as it attempts to reckon with dislocation and brokenness as symptoms of late-stage capitalism, hetero-patriarchy, and settler-colonialism. Odes, letters to dead ancestors, and dream fragments are woven with reflections on process and poems that interrogate notions of health, intelligence, belonging, and ownership. The work is formally textured and woven, using collage, fragments, photographs, and the epistolary mode to invoke re-generation and entanglement. This work is indebted to an enmeshed web of poet influences, including but not limited to H.D., Adrienne Rich, Lucille Clifton, Denise Levertov, Victoria Chang, Dianne Seuss, Eleni Sikelianos, Lucia Perillo, Layli Longsoldier, Claudia Rankine, Jane Wong, Lynn Hejinian, Ely Shipley, and Stefania Heim.

Type

Text

Keywords

Poetry, eco-poetics, hybrid, post-memory, epistolary, ancestors, chronic illness

Publisher

Western Washington University

OCLC Number

1317773764

Subject – LCSH

American poetry--21st century

Format

application/pdf

Genre/Form

Academic theses; Epistolary poetry

Language

English

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

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