Date of Award
1-1-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in English
First Advisor
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Second Advisor
Jay Watson
Third Advisor
Melissa Ginsburg
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
“Ground Level” is a full-length poetry collection situated at the intersection of ecopoetics and psychology, where the theme of “grounding” one’s self continually emerges in the midst of personal geographical changes and experiences of collective social trauma during a period of prolonged immersion in the natural world. By exploring through an array of poetic forms, structures, and experimentations including golden shovels, contrapuntals, haikus, an abecedarian, a sestina, grounding exercises, poems featuring 20th century children’s television host Fred Rogers, and a sonnet crown which also explores queerness in the 21st century Southeast, the speaker engages with a number of different methods to ground themselves in order to feel connected to their body in the natural world, to develop an ethic of care, and to expand their understandings of interrelationship and ecological community. Through syntactically fresh speakers and by continually returning to and moving through these forms within the manuscript, readerly perceptions of the webs of relationships involving self, ecological communities, place, the temporal, and language might be affected and altered.
Recommended Citation
Graber, Margaret, "Ground Level: Poems" (2023). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2507.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2507