Theses and Dissertations Collection

"Here for Now" is a collection of poems in three parts, unified by representations of witness. Shakespearean characters witness acts of violence, memory witnesses childhood, and the reader is asked to witness images of history alongside the complex emotions with which they intersect. All poems attempt to shoulder the responsibility, at least in part, for the consequences of that history. The collection’s centerpiece, a longer poem in five parts, celebrates human movement and progress while honoring what we have left in our wake. The history of the poem, regular form and meter, is remembered by the repetitive villanelles, which contain repetitive figures, and the triolets in which the reader witnesses the unfolding of tragedy. It is important that each poem’s shape and form feel inevitable, and that each uses, as Dickinson advises, candor as its only wile.