“Lake Echo” is a collection of poems in three parts. It centers around a fictionalized rural landscape, and the nuanced family dynamics and social systems that accompany rural spaces. The poems focus on memory and trauma, and how trauma can be performed by the body – theatre and staging are central metaphors in the collection, as the narrator considers her own modes of performance, and the disembodiment caused by trauma and unhealthy learned behaviors. The poems are bound by a repeating title, “Lake Echo,” in which the narrator reflects again and again on both physical and emotional landscapes. In the Afterword, I discuss poetic and theatrical influences for the collection, as well as ways of knowing that come from animal interaction and engagement; animals populate the collection, and are a primary source of inspiration for the text. I also discuss Vievee Francis’s “antipastoral” poems, and the idea of remaking or redefining rural poetics.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:englmfa_theses-1136 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Creators | Valley, Rebecca |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | MFA Program for Poets & Writers Masters Theses Collection |
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