Masters of Fine Arts Creative Writing Poetry Thesis

These are poems by BJ Soloy.

The Monk and the Butterfly is a set of six fictional stories ranging in length, experimenting with different narrative structures and techniques, which examine and explore the idea of the human self as a fictional story. This creative work seeks to deliberately transgress the boundaries of genre within literature and evoke the sense of non-empirical, ecstatic, or poetic truth in the mind of the reader. In doing so it mingles and remixes ideas of dystopian and utopian, cyberpunk and zombies, fairy tales and scientific inquiry, multiphrenia and recursion, mythology and ontology, copyright and copyleft, media theory and queer theory, feminism and transhumanism, genderfuck and genrefuck, rejection of binaries and absence of identity. The stories range in subject matter including the larvae of the deathwatch beetle, a suicidal artificial intelligence, a woman made of bread, the eating of names, a global pandemic of sleep deprivation, and the end of the world. / February 2014

<p> <i>Poetry as a Museum</i> is a two-part collection of poems that reveals different subject matter from the poet&rsquo;s view of the world. The first part deals with family and the juxtapositions of life in the United States and Vietnam. The second part is focused on the poet, her voice, and lens outside of family. Both parts cohere as a collection around the idea of a poetry museum, one that curates the various stories, memories, experiences, and interests of family and poet, in Vietnam and the United States. Moreover, the poems rely on their strangeness in image as well as structure. </p>

<p> <i>Queered</i> is a collection of short stories revolving around issues of queer identity, both contemporary and historical, that reflect the diversity of the LGBTQIA community and the relational dynamics of those associated with such labels. In their own way, these stories seek to shine a light on what is not talked about, those left behind, and the aftermath of truth. Although <i> Queered</i> takes on a myriad of topics and roles from gay parents to gay children, virgins to prostitutes, minorities to pedophiles, it is worth noting this collection functions in a limited capacity and does not presume to cover or represent all facets related to the LGBTQIA community. The language is vivid and highly characterized, written in strong consideration of the character&rsquo;s own thoughts and kept accurate to time and region. Plot is secondary to character, always. It is my sincere hope that conversations in writing become conversations in life, that exposure breeds awareness, awareness fosters change, and change engenders acceptance.</p>

<p> From Under the Blanket is a series of short stories that are told through the lens of modern day Native Americans. These stories provide insight into the struggles of fitting in outside of the token historical and/or Hollywood versions of what &ldquo;Native Americans&rdquo; are depicted as. The timeline progresses from a young girl&rsquo;s perspective of learning about traditions, into a young man dealing with the grief of death and the progression of a new chapter in his life, to an older woman reflecting on the way that society judges not only her but her daughter because of their DNA. Each story translates the harsh realities of being a Native American in a society that believes this ethnicity is either extinct or subjected to the barriers of Reservations. Within each tale, there is a spark of truth of how people have been and still are treated in our current time. The mistreatment of Natives throughout the United States is showcased through these characters&rsquo; voices, echoing the importance of respecting and understanding the culture and history of all tribes, both the recognized and the overlooked.</p>

<p> <i>Converging Origins: Never Forget What Happened in the Future</i> represents a body of poems that examine people&rsquo;s (re)location, and how the movement from one place to another influences an individual&rsquo;s identity and personality. The inspiration for this concept arose out of something that Thomas Wolfe wrote in his novel, <i>You Can&rsquo;t Go Home Again</i>: &ldquo;You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time&mdash;back home to the escapes of Time and Memory&rdquo; (602). While these poems were written over the span of three years, they nonetheless attempt to capture something from every stage of my development (as a poet and person). The inherent paradox of the title is a way to emphasize that people who journey back to their homeland, hometown, or even street they grew up on, are never actually going <i>back</i>, but always moving forward.</p>

PLIGHT AND PASSION By Lisa B. Williams A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014. Major Director: Dr. John McCown, Professor of English, English Department. The goal of this thesis is to bring to life the countless stories of oppression, perseverance, and hope of African-Americans during the early twentieth century. I used two settings, the rural South and the industrialized North, to reflect the different challenges of surviving and thriving during times of segregation. Buck Carrington, in Part I of the novel that is set in Virginia, is forced to confront not only his own personal demons of lust and intemperance, but also the vices of hatred and racism. In the end, he loses everything. His wife, Helen, decides to leave Buck, and she ventures to the city, to Harlem, which is the setting for Part II of this novel. As a woman with no education, she must forge a path to independence by working hard and attaining an education, and incidentally, she finds love and self-confidence in the process. I used dialect and vivid description to characterize each protagonist, Buck as wild and hot-tempered, and Helen as reserved and shy, but strong-willed. I also used historical references and allusions to place the reader in the time period and to bring the many facets of African American culture and values to life.

This creative thesis examines modes of alienation. The Visitor series explores a speaker that is searching for a home.

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