Viscera

Viscera is a poetic manuscript thesis presented to the faculty of the University of Virginia in candidacy for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Through its roughly sixty pages of poetry, the work explores questions of mortality, embodiedness, and spirituality through the lens of rural Midwestern masculinity and landscape. Across poetic forms, Viscera interrogates our world's implicit violences, both external and internal, as well as the vulnerable but powerfully human entrance points to the body, the mind, and the self, one comes of age possessing. From boyhood, to adolescence, to adulthood, the work charts a path towards reckoning with the invisible forces that shape the very much visible experiences of being alive, and asks if it is possible to move beyond these alienating forces towards a broader, redemptive solace.