Anna Pearl Johnson Women in Flight: A Study of Feminist Liberation Through Poetic Expression
The United States' sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s has been argued as a time of liberated behaviors surrounding feelings, desires, and love, both of and for women. In many ways, the revolution acted as a lasting catalyst of communication: the verbal and written expression of feeling. Though for some, the era did the opposite, strengthening purity culture and repression of emotions. How then does poetry from the period demonstrate the flexibility and versatility of women's strong emotions, like rage or passion? What are the implications of how a woman expresses emotion? The final undertaking of the year-long Kidd Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon, this analytic essay investigates the relationship between feminist liberation themes in poetry and the diverse ways such liberation is manifested through literary devices. By reviewing the poetry of Margaret Atwood, Eavan Boland, Erica Jong, and Audre Lorde I contend that close readings demonstrate that liberation in the written word is strongly tied to the author's sense of place and their subsequent sociological environment.
Emma Snyder Confessional Poetry, and the Liberation of the Invisibly Ill Poet
Where is the mind left when betrayed by the flesh? This project explores the origins of the confessional poetry movement, and how it has served to uplift the voices of chronically and/or invisibly ill poets. My essay will explore theory on defining the confessional poetic, as well as cover several recurring themes utilized in confessional poetry surrounding illness, including dualism, metaphors of imprisonment or isolation, and the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the grotesque. The body and its "oppression" remains a central theme throughout the paper, as the invisibly ill poet is left to construct a "new reality," asking themselves what comes next when forced to struggle against their own physical self.
Mia Vance Here, There, and Back Again: the Greater Romantic Lyric in Modern Irish Migration Poetics
Poetics of place have had a longstanding home within traditional Irish poetry; Patrick Kavanagh, William Butler Yeats, and Seamus Heaney are just a few Irish poets to have pulled inspiration from their geographical, historical, linguistic, political, and personal spaces in their native Ireland. Arguably of equal prevalence are the migrations, both historical and modern, of Irish citizens to – and in recent decades, increasingly back from – various countries abroad (notably the United Kingdom and the United States). As an American poet of Irish-immigrant lineage, considering my own fascination with place-based poetics and the possibility of my own migration experience, have sought out a poetic form existing within the extant literary establishment whose structure might support the complexity of Irish [im/e]migration writing. Through a series of close-readings of a selection of works by the late great Irish and international poet Eavan Boland within the context of the Greater Romantic Lyric form, this presentation explores the relationship between the spatial, temporal, and philosophical movements of modern Irish [im/e]migration and the locality-based GRL formal structure – from here, to there, and back again.
Conner Hardwick Justifying the Written Word: Medium Specific Techniques that can’t be Adapted and What they Are
The book, or rather, writing in general, has long been considered the most fundamental storytelling medium in a post oral tradition culture. Every other medium—the younger, more modern ones like film and comics and video games—is defined by enthusiasts in the way they each differ from the base form of a written novel. They are all afforded storytelling possibilities beyond the common prose-filled page. A book is ‘standard’, and consequently boring to many, understood as, in a sense, the most limited medium. As a fan of these other mediums, and medium-specific features, I decided to approach written stories with the same mindset to find what a novel can deliver as an experience that can’t be imitated in another form. In this essay, I will draw upon the techniques used in several texts, from Jabberwocky to Benito Cereno to House of Leaves, in an effort to explore the capabilities of and minutiae distinct to the medium of the written word. The intent is to demonstrate experimental forms of writing and reexamine overlooked dynamics of reading to ascertain what is special about the particular, unique form of writing as a storytelling medium. There are experiences unique to this medium that simply cannot be done justice in another, and I intend show you what exactly those are.
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