"The Size of Your Family, A Thing of Bottled Shrimps" by Barrett Lipkin

Date of Graduation

2016

Document Type

MFA Creative Writing Thesis (Campus Access)

Degree Type

MFA

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

English

Committee Chair

Mary A Samyn

Committee Co-Chair

James Harms

Committee Member

Katy Ryan

Abstract

These poems serve as a representation of what I believe poetry to be. Throughout a commitment to process which highlights the making of poems over the poems themselves, I believe a wide array of poetic forms, modes and tones were explored. I believe I am a moral person so there is a moral tone to these poems. I believe I am a realistic person (in terms of acknowledging the truth of our landscape) and so there is a realistic tone to the poems, I believe. I believe that to make anything of substance in poetry there must be a discovery and so, for better or worse, these poems all were aimed that way.;Formally these poems range widely; I believe in the image and in unlocking ways for the image to be released untethered from the syntactical webbings we normally net them in. I found great pleasure experimenting with forms and voices in these poems. I hope the reader allows the images to speak for themselves; just as one would not look for the meaning of a note struck on a piano nor from the sound of a feather when it's pulled from a robin's neck.

Available for download on Friday, January 01, 2123

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