Publication Date

5-2025

Date of Final Oral Examination (Defense)

3-5-2025

Type of Culminating Activity

Thesis

Degree Title

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Department

Theatre, Film, and Creative Writing

Supervisory Committee Chair

Martin Corless-Smith, Ph.D.

Supervisory Committee Member

Sara Nicholson, Ph.D.

Supervisory Committee Member

Christopher Eaton, M.A., M.F.A.

Abstract

This thesis, titled some sonnets, is an exploration of generative practices, language gathering, and experimental fragmentation that manifests in a “cacophony of voices.” Parallel to and estranged from the traditional sonnet form, these poems emerge from a collaged and sculpted approach to Poetry, which places the work more on the side of conceptual art than traditional collection of verse.

The sonnets are recursive, referencing their own making, their own debatable status as “poems,” and the language that populates them. Here, meaning is offered in fragmented ways, inviting a small readership to attempt to parse these quasiautobiographical viewings and compositions. The poems seem to resist meaning in favor of whimsy, seriousness in favor of play, and clarity in favor of anti-capitalist ambiguity.

Containing a meta-dialogue between the poet-author and a fictional “Lay Expert,” an intentionally incongruent table of contents, and the written poems themselves, this thesis provokes discussion about creation, observation, attention, and generation. Collaged from a highly generative process, these poems — more organization and collection than sung narrative — also adhere to a mathematical constraint. The layers of the work implicate social navigation and mirror the ambiguity that happens. The work presented is an experiment in conversation with the sonnet.

Comments

At the request of the Department of Theatre, Film, and Creative Writing, the document available on this record contains only the front matter of the corresponding thesis. The document in its entirety is not available for general viewing.

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