running away, running towards: a collection of sestinas

Abstract

These poems of vulnerability, love, and loss trace the journey of a poet slowly coming into their identity. They emphasize the intensity and quality of the mundane, with poems found in bus stops, bowls of soup, quiet mornings, and inkstains. The repetition of words in the sestina form also gives these poems an obsessive quality, reflecting how we move forwards even as we keep returning to the same thoughts, ideas, places, and words.

The thesis consists of three parts. The first, “running away,” grapples most deeply with what it means to lose and fear love; the second, “on the edge,” focuses on moments spent in uncertainty, where we are not so confident about what comes next or what to do. The final, “running towards,” pushes us to keep running towards life in spite of it all, and to choose to become our full, individual selves