abstract: The poems in this book are lyric, meditational, and narrative approaches to autobiographical tales. These works, through various poetic forms, are an attempt to assess and equate personal life experiences with those larger human and universal occasions. Spanning both physical time (a cross-country move from Virginia to Arizona) and spatial time (Virginia and Mississippi during the civil rights movement), the works evaluate and validate the human experiences of loss. Through poems addressed to various family members and historical figures, the book attempts to terms with the often humorous, often terrifying experience of being an African American male in the United States in the 21st Century. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Creative Writing 2012

abstract: I Hate Everyone But You bears witness to the quiet moments that force us to confront ourselves. In these stories, people in search of connection--to lovers, to family, to strangers--instead discover their own secrets: truths both haunting and empowering. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2015

abstract: Black Laurel is a book-length manuscript which has at its center poems that reveal and explore issues related to Michele Poulos's identity as a Greek-American writer, discovering the connections that link the past and present of both Greece and America. These poems often work as a quest to recover identity. They explore the idea that it is her own privileged perspective as an educated Greek-American woman that both allows and in some ways prevents her seeing herself in the Greeks who today are struggling economically, emotionally, and psychologically. Many of the poems work to achieve a complex understanding of both an individual as well as a broader cultural history. These poems sometimes take on the personas of striking figures from other times and other landscapes, while others draw on materials which are somewhat more autobiographical. In one poem titled "Before My Mother Set Herself on Fire," the speaker is an imagined daughter in a modern-day Greek family. The poem, inspired by a news story about an elderly man who shot himself in the head in front of Syntagma Square in Athens to protest the austerity measures imposed on the Greek population, explores the various ways in which a national crisis may affect an individual family. Alternatively, Poulos delves into her personal family history in "When the Wind Falls," a poem about the Nazi invasions of northern Greece. At the same time, this focus on past and present Greece is only one strand in a wide-ranging manuscript woven of materials which also include a variety of subjects related to science, history, eroticism, mysticism, and much more. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Creative Writing 2013

abstract: Cruz del Sur is an exploration of what it means to be an outsider: as a resident, as a foreigner, from the perspective of the human eye, or from the perspective of a camera lens. An unlikely blending of voices, these poems embark the reader on a journey across a continent, and also into an interior: a mystical quest. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Creative Writing 2013

abstract: Rest for Machines is a fragmented novel about a woman named Tina Medina / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. English 2013

abstract: The stories in Backyard Cannibals examine the thin line between connecting with another person and consuming them. They dwell in the intersections of natural and manmade worlds, exploring dislocated bodies, unexpected wildernesses, and the consequences of hunger. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Creative Writing 2013

<p> The methods, experimentations, philosophies and influential artists mentioned in this thesis all form part of my artistic exploration and art from the level of cells to the large oceanic water world. As an artist of Fine Arts at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, my main emphasis is to associate these concepts with my personal experiences, cultural traditions and artistic perspectives with my likes for lines, colors and spaces in what I called, Nature, Essence and Spirit. Furthermore, my artistic approach was mostly influenced by the views of artists such as, Vasily Kandinsky, Frank Stella, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Dale Chihuly and Tauba Auerbach.</p><p>

<p> The artwork I strive to create infuses what interests me and is important to me all the while taking issues I feel are important to address and incorporating them as well. In the case of the exhibit <i>Spiritual Awakening,</i> the passion of creating narrative imagery in the form of a graphic novel as well as the yearning to express my faith was the vehicle to bring to light many social injustices in the form of criminal activity from murder to corruption. Though these themes have been seen in different aspects in a variety of mediums, rarely have they been conveyed all together in one package. As these three things are formed and displayed in <i>Spiritual Awakening,</i> it is meant to produce a healthy dialogue to not only see the nature of some people who lean towards criminal activity, but to also seek to become better themselves.</p><p>

<p> <i>WEATHERED</i> is a means to give back and say thanks to all who have helped me through life and offer similar aid to anyone willing to listen. Presented within the CRAIVE Lab at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Technology Park on March 4^th, 4pm to 8pm, it depicts an allegorical journey of survival, change, and rediscovery as people are reunited with their identity after separating themselves from it as a means of survival.</p><p> In the Thesis, the autobiographical forces behind <i>WEATHERED</i> are defogged, revealing a personal past of birth, growth, abuse, survival, and healing. It will further unravel and look deeper into the artwork's use of allegory, its development process, and conceptual decisions and symbolism, all in conjunction with the artist's creative growth and metamorphosis.</p><p>

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