Thrum: Poems
Date
2014-10-07
Authors
Johnson, Michele K
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Abstract
In this book-length collection of poetry divided into three sections, I use a variety of forms to explore the anxieties of memory. Throughout the manuscript, the poems wrestle with the complications of inheritance and artifacts—those things that get left behind and held on to, both physical and intangible. In the first section, the poems are grounded in place and excavation practices, utilizing source material from the Historic St. Mary’s City website to add texture to the speaker’s ruminations on a failed relationship. The middle section of the manuscript serves as a bridge between the first and third sections, chronicling the problems of the physical act of making memories, refracting and returning to the same memory again and again and chronicling the shifts in memories as they age. In the final section of the manuscript, the poems turn toward family history, examining the speaker’s relationship to expired relatives and to the expectations they may have left lingering in her life.
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Experimental forms, Series, Historic St. Mary's City, Memory, Poetry