Advisory Committee Chair
Adam B Vines
Advisory Committee Members
Rebecca A Bach
Kerry Madden-Lunsford
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2016
Degree Name by School
Master of Arts (MA) College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
The following thesis is a creative one, composed of thirty poems written in various forms. Included in this work are different types of sonnets, including Elizabethan and Petrarchan, experiments with less frequented forms such as villanelle, pantoum, and triolet, and many poems written in blank verse and syllabics. Thematically, this collection deals with liminality—times of transition and uncertainty where people are no longer exactly who or what they used to be but are not quite fully across the threshold into a new phase. This liminality presents in multiple different ways, with speakers who are dealing with transitions such as ending relationships, their children leaving for college, growing from adolescence to young adulthood, and learning to sing, among many other things. Within this larger theme, the collection also contains bird and beach motifs, both of which represent more physical transition places where sky, ground, and water meet. Taken together, these poems both lament and celebrate the growing pains of their speakers and the larger human anxiety between physical (natural) and virtual (manmade) existence.
Recommended Citation
Taylor, Cheyenne Day, "Liminal" (2016). All ETDs from UAB. 3115.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/3115