This thesis explores the intersections of war, motherhood, and language in the poetry of Aria Aber and Solmaz Sharif, focusing in particular on their debut poetry collections, Hard Damage and LOOK respectively, and the “America” poems by both poets, published online. Chapter One explores the differing portrayals of motherhood in Aber’s poems and Sharif’s poems, focusing particularly on Aber’s specificity in the image of the mother, focused on the speaker’s mother, and Sharif’s wider view of the mother. Chapter Two explores how each of them portray war through the similar formal structure—a list poem followed by a long documentary poem focused on the personal—in order to understand the lasting impacts of war. Chapter Three focuses on their “America” poems and how both poets understand belonging, and how they eventually find an impossible home in language.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:masters_theses_2-2400 |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Creators | Mujumdar, Malavika |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Masters Theses |
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