Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Open Access Thesis
Department
English Language and Literatures
First Advisor
Samuel Amadon
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the idea of nuance in culturally oversimplified narratives, including fraught paternal relationships, sexual assault and non-consent dynamics, childhood and young adulthood LGBTQ+ experiences, and everyday life and mental health in the climate crisis. Drawing upon the 20th century tradition of short poetry and minimalism, this thesis attempts to demonstrate the frustration of post-internet media culture’s fixation on providing a complete account of a complex issue in extremely limited linguistic space. This collection narratively demonstrates a night of insomnia, loneliness, and depression from sunset to sunrise as the speaker recalls various memories from their life. In using the linguistic limitation and relatable mental-health framing device, and in arranging poems such that no topic is continuously subject to reflection without interruption, it also seeks to address questions of the role of reader-attentiveness in the cultural limitation of rhetorical narratives and the way this impacts the nature of poetry itself.
Rights
© 2023, Jacob Connor Smith
Recommended Citation
Smith, J. C.(2023). Mouth Stuff. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/7194