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My Mother and Father Were Astronauts

In these lyric-narrative poems, the speaker is under constant threat of violence, trouble, danger, or death, but that death is never realized. Rather, the speaker, much like many of the lives in the desert, not only survives amidst the constant threat of violence, but flourishes because of it; the interior landscape of the speaker, the tenor of the language and syntax, and exterior landscapes implied in these poems are mirror surfaces, and as such, so are we.

Despite the exterior world and relationships being arguably broken down, failed, impoverished, abandoned, etc., these poems gesture toward a sense of redemption, hope, reverence for life, and a kind of holiness that are found in the church of the desert. It has been said that the desert is monotheistic; if this is the case, then the speaker and the lives in these poems, despite being hardened by the desert, sing hymnals that celebrate that faith. There is a church in the wild. / Master of Fine Arts

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/52954
Date15 June 2015
CreatorsKatsimbras, Arian Nicholas
ContributorsEnglish, Hicok, Robert G., Meitner, Erika S., D'Aguiar, Frederick M.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
FormatETD, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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