I Tried to Love the Ghost

Paul Dean, University of Mississippi

Abstract

The poems in this manuscript are an attempt to document the formative years of a singular, masculine speaker in the Southern United States. Many of the poems often rely on the knowledge of mythic stories that the speaker believes or at least feels the necessity to recall, in order to understand the past as well as the future. Specifically, the manuscript focuses on the speaker's experiences with the church, encounters with violent and often dysfunctional family members, and his eventual marriage. Throughout the entirety of this manuscript, the speaker questions the idea of manhood and constantly struggles with identity, seeking to separate from his home and the people that still inhabit the region.