Year of Award
2025
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
Heid Erdrich, Bryan Cochran
Keywords
lyric poetry, seasonality, queerness
Subject Categories
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies | Poetry | Queer Studies
Abstract
The Evening Gardener follows a speaker through each of the four seasons as he ponders his vegetables, his surroundings, and his own loneliness. He is cultivating the plants in the garden, and he is cultivating a world, a space, a home around him to find meaning and connection. He is both gardening in evening and tending to the garden of his evenings.
The poems in the collection unspool, moving from single image into memory, metaphor, list. Simple actions, such as getting stuck in the snow, getting tested for STIs, or steaming one’s clothes, become the site of exploration, of excavation of this speaker’s desires, his fears, and his solitude. The collection is concerned with the differences between the emotional weight of isolation and the acts and pleasures of simply being alone, he writes “sometimes I don't even feel lonely,/ just unaccompanied.” As a reader we accompany him through a year of ache and joy, of finding the bounty that comes with a sting, the beauty in a world that is changing.
Recommended Citation
Bovard, Samuel, "The Evening Gardener" (2025). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 12527.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/12527
Included in
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Poetry Commons, Queer Studies Commons
© Copyright 2025 Samuel Bovard