Semester of Graduation
Spring 2021
Degree
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
Dark Blue was the Water is a collection of poetry and my offering to a very tangible liminal space between life and death. The poetry will either sink or swim with the reader, as it has left me wanting for air in both surrender and gasp. There is an intoxicating edge one stands, and any push could render the body to surrender forward and fall or abandon back; and what will it mean to fall back? What will it require to accept or confront or see the whole picture for ourselves? The choice to live is a dangerous one, both radical and fleeting. This collection of poetry resigns itself to interrogate death, understood as both literal and metaphysical. I allow myself to become curious with how it lives inside of me. What does it mean as a solution? Or, even questioning why it was not the answer for others. And, what happens to a dead thing? If death is understood as beyond the physical body itself, I nod to recovery as the recognition that one did not get what they needed. And I do this by lingering on the tone of forgiveness without ever saying it. I am calling out to these bones historically and within my family ancestry. I am saying I see you. I hear/have heard you. And I am writing down the bones that have lived with you, and now within me. This collection of poetry serves as my curiosity to understand this for myself.
Recommended Citation
banks, simone j., "Dark Blue was the Water" (2021). LSU Master's Theses. 5296.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/5296
Committee Chair
fahima ife
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_theses.5296