Abstract:
This poetry thesis comes in two separate parts: “Aught to,” a lyric narrative that explores
the effects of commercial time travel, and “Subjects of,” a collection of verse poems
driven by sound, wordplay, and constraint. Poems in both collections employ multiple
speakers and perspectives to raise questions about how we value records of human
history and cultural preservation on a grand scale, juxtaposing those ideas with scenes of
individual experience. Speakers often find themselves caught in spaces between
definition.