brat olympics

Author

Caroline Ganci PattersonFollow

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

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