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
Sean Hill
Committee Co-chair
Brian Blanchfield
Commitee Members
Julia Galloway
Subject Categories
Poetry
Abstract
With broad lyric range, the ecopoems in Green center around the ideology and ethics of the American West. The speaker’s position within that as a descendent of settler laborers is interrogated, as well as language itself. Grammar is used as a tool to perform deconstructive work, examining how labor intersects with colonialism and climate change. Melding intellectual analyses of etymology with the physical act of agricultural labor, these poems range from the conversational and playful to lyric explorations of loss.
Interwoven with this is the speaker’s self-examination of femininity and matrilinear inheritance. How do we use the language we’ve been given to define ourselves, and our understanding of place? The ways we talk about land as a resource, home, and inspiration are considered through multiple lenses, such as science, regional flower guides, familial lore, and workday conversation. In the middle section, grief is treated similarly, by using elements like mythology, birds, and American chain hotels to ask, what is left in the wake of loss? In both cases, the poems here build a taxonomy of what is left behind—in the wake of colonialism, familial inheritance, loss, and ecogrief—and how we love the world in spite of it.
Recommended Citation
Emerick Valentine, Lillian I., "Green Poems" (2024). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 12300.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/12300
Included in
© Copyright 2024 Lillian I. Emerick Valentine