Year of Award
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Degree Name
Creative Writing (Poetry)
Department or School/College
English
Committee Chair
Brian Blanchfield
Commitee Members
Sean Hill, Danielle Fahey
Keywords
queer literature, sexuality, suburbanism, gender performance, satire, poetry
Publisher
University of Montana
Subject Categories
Poetry
Abstract
brat olympics is an exploration of feminine disgust, apprehension, and disorientation contextualized through interpersonal relationships and societal shapeshifting. It pays particular attention to gender performance, surburban queerness, and strangerness. The manuscript plays on the history of the bildungsroman, but instead of one consistent singular timeline, it provides three separate attempts at a characterization of a life. These disparate approaches to a singular life’s characterization stress the mundanity of documentation.
This multinarrative approach satirizes the ideal of the singular confessional, and presents a discursive approach to the way we choose to build our worlds. Building off the works of the New Sentence language poets, brat olympics often teases at autobiographical concinnity and engages in play of the non sequitur and mosaic antics. Influences include Frank O’Hara, Ross Gay, Kim Addonizio, Ben Lerner, Joanna Fuhrmann, Eugene Ostashevsky, and Simone White, to name a few.
Topics explored throughout the manuscript include but are not limited to: feminine domination, enforced male chastity, theatrics, snot, the wendy’s finger in the chili incident, endocannibalism, emotional projection on to the very topography of the mountainous west, the concept of the meal deal, suburban sprawl, and squirrel population management.
Recommended Citation
Patterson, Caroline Ganci, "brat olympics" (2024). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 12362.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/12362
Included in
© Copyright 2024 Caroline Ganci Patterson