Fences & Fault-lines, Deadfalls & Snares

Author

Mackenzie Cole, The University of MontanaFollow

Year of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis - Campus Access Only

Degree Type

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Degree Name

Creative Writing (Poetry)

Department or School/College

Department of English

Committee Chair

Greg Pape

Commitee Members

Christine Fiore, Christopher Comer, Joanna Klink

Keywords

abuse, abuse poems, bucolic, environmental poetry, fences, horse poems, horses, Mackenzie Cole, nature poetry, pastoral, poetry, trapping

Abstract

The following collection of poems, Fences & Fault-lines, Deadfalls & Snares, attempts to chart the hierarchies mapped in the English language. Those in power–governments, churches, movements, militaries, businesses–manipulate our language to bait us, the threat of violence hanging overhead like a dead weight. Or their language holds us fast to a rock until we starve, or corrals us in so tight a space we attack those closest to us. Deadfalls. Snares. Fences. These are the voices used to entrap us. But deadfalls are no trap for those who know how they're set. Snares can be undone. And fences can be burned. Beyond, the fields open into ranges, bounded only where the rivers coil through canyons, where the ridge-lines wind past the edges of property. There–a language to rust the barbed wire. These poems seek that country.

Recommended Citation

Cole, Mackenzie, "Fences & Fault-lines, Deadfalls & Snares" (2012). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 440.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/440