Body Rumors: Poems

Date of Award

Spring 2025

Project Type

Thesis

Program or Major

English

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

First Advisor

Diannely Antigua

Second Advisor

David Blair

Third Advisor

Shelley Girdner

Abstract

Body Rumors: Poems is a collection that blends the jumbled, transitory experiences of young adulthood with recalled horrors from childhood. Body Rumors confronts a personal history of childhood sexual abuse and examines how violence persists in the nervous system for decades. The collection traces the culture of silence from my upbringing in Opus Dei and interrogates how that culture informed later experiences with intimate partner violence. Other themes include chronic pain, gender identity, illness, and queerness. These thirty-six poems employ a range of poetic forms, including a sestina, a villanelle, and an “Etymology” form of my own invention. There are multiple obsessive series that run through the collection, notably the “spontaneous recovery” poems which mark the beginnings of the five sections.

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