Thesis (M.F.A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007. / Vita.

TITLE: ARBOR DEMENTIA MAJOR PROFESSOR: Professor Judy Jordan Arbor Dementia is a collection of poems divided into two parts. The first includes poems that primarily address the author's childhood years, and focus on themes of family, nature, religion, and dementia. The second part includes poems that explore distance and its effect on the themes of the first part.

Thesis (Ed.M.)—Boston University. Pages 47-48 are missing in all copies.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

ABSTRACT/PREFACE AUSTIN KODRA, for the MASTER OF FINE ARTS degree in CREATIVE WRITING, presented on March 24, 2014 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: VISIBILITY AT ZERO MAJOR PROFESSOR: JUDY JORDAN Nobody very close to me has ever died. I grew up in the most indescribably wonderful household. I have a fiancee who I am whole-soul in love with (for the reasons you all know well). And I am a healthy, young, American white male. Currently certain circumstances have forced my fiancee and me to live 7 hours apart. Being away from her and alone again has been a trial and has produced prolonged and deep feelings of sadness for the first time in my life. Depression or negative experiences (surviving trauma, tragedy, injustice, etc) seem to fuel and expand creativity for a lot of writers, and I know for a fact there is a critical mass of brilliant and perhaps untouchable work driven by these experiences. But as much I respect and care for such writing, I have found that writing or reading poetry is definitely not my go-to response for my own sadness. I've realized that's just not how I choose to process those feelings. Not yet, at least. So I'm writing this thesis with the hopes, primarily, to entertain, humor, and perhaps philosophize--on occasion (I've always enjoyed the big, sweeping statement, when used well). As such, there is not a definitive narrative arc to this thesis. It's not a project book. There are no concrete, content-driven ties between the three sections. This means I am obliged to deliver the connective tissue through other, more transient ways. Rodney Jones used to always make us start each poem we'd discuss in workshop by asking someone to define the intentions of the poem. I think that's a direction I've taken to heart as much as anything else during my time here. I must know and understand my own intentions, clearly and articulately. I must be able to be self-analytical--if I can't clearly voice my intention, how can I expect a reader to follow me down whatever path I've chosen. It is with that advice that I wrote most of my poems. My instincts as a storyteller and my particular imagination lead my intentions largely toward sarcasm, humor, relatable situations/stories, distinct voices, and occasional attempts at being philosophical. My intention is to write poems that are generally accessible in both content and form and carry at least a few particular themes or commonalities. In the interest not of defending my own work but of attempting to articulate my own understanding of it, I'd say that a few of the major themes I'm trying to work with across the book are would be: * Resistance to certain aesthetic trends in contemporary poetry. * Nostalgia - Reflective particularly of various "educational experiences," both inside and outside of school, ranging from early childhood through my teen years. * Exploration of external events and circumstances that I have either experienced or researched that I have found particularly engaging and fascinating, often at a psychological level ("Obsession" with people with obsessions - documentaries, etc). * Persona, and heavily voice-driven work. * Loss of innocence, usually filtered through particular events or situations. But above all things I've learned about writing while I've been in Carbondale, I've learned that for me, writing must be fun. Or I just won't do it. I'll watch or read something someone else had fun making instead. So it is my goal that these poems elicit a few smirks and raised eyebrows, a chuckle, or maybe a moment or readers remember a time they felt it, too.

HANNAH NEW, for the Masters of Fine Arts degree in Poetry, presented on April 2, 2010, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: Ways to Look at December MAJOR PROFESSOR: Rodney Jones This thesis explores the styles and voices of Hannah K New in poetry.

A Keyhole Cut in the Shape of my Name is a book of poetry about my mother’s death due to leukemia.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

BIRDS OF OHIO is a collection of lyrical and narrative poems that explore the interior nature of domestic life. These poems peer below the surface of ideas like home, family, faith, and marriage to reveal the complex contradictions and particular moments of love, fear, pain, and grace that create the domestic world of the speaker. Rooted in natural landscapes and often drawing on religious language, the poems point to the meeting of the physical and spiritual worlds, at times blurring the distinction between them. The collection is not divided into sections; rather, the different themes are braided together to create a portrait of domestic life where experiences of love and death, questions of faith and meaning, and conflict concerning marriage, family, addiction, and the idea of home are inextricable from one another.

BALM OF GILEAD is a collection of poetry that explores the speaker’s rediscovery of love and spiritual meaning in the years after his recovery from addiction and the loss of a parent. BALM OF GILEAD fits within the English poetic tradition of fastening ineffable sacred experience into more personal lyric modes, an inheritance dating not only to the works of John Donne, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but to the Psalms of David. The often-confessional poems in BALM OF GILEAD borrow from the free verse and emotional urgency of Denis Johnson; the broken sonnets of Molly Peacock; and the devotional rhetorical posture of Maurice Manning. Moreover, BALM OF GILEAD orders poems through imagistic and thematic associations to document the complex means through which the speaker experiences his conversion away from the certainty of addiction and grief and into the unsure but redemptive footing of love and faith.