Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Open Access Thesis
Department
English Language and Literatures
First Advisor
Samuel Amadon
Abstract
This poetry manuscript explores loneliness, sexuality, violence, gender/fluidity, the self, the idea of the self, and American capitalism with an irreverent and dry humor. Tragicomic in tone, the poems balance a sense of dire exuberance with personal history and anecdote ranging from sentimental to sarcastic to withering. Located in New Jersey, the manuscript engages with local history, lore, and culture. A wide range of references bridge various ends of the literary canon, while the poems likewise reach for referents from fine art, music, TV, and film. Characters recur as figures of patriarchy, capitalistic work ethic, and gender trouble in various mixtures of real, imagined, and fictive. Similar to these characters, inanimate images blend into commemorative attachments and are threaded together, existentially and anachronistically, with memory. This surrealist collection aims to create a unique space between the past and present and between the actual and the absurd.
Rights
© 2023, Katherine Shanks
Recommended Citation
Shanks, K.(2023). Tragic Relief!. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/7193