Abstracts Category : Other

Forever in Clovis

by Jacob A Kelly

Forever in Clovis is a collection of poems that, in large part, seeks to participate in the pastoral tradition and mode in an effort to explore the relationship between the human/manmade world and the nonhuman/natural world in contemporary America. More specifically, the speaker's navigation of this relationship reveals his connection to or his estrangement from the natural world, the intersection of the wild and the imaginative, and the speaker's ambivalence in the midst of the natural and ever developing human world a perspective that implicitly acknowledges the history of the pastoral and its function in poetry today. In relying on the multifarious nature of this relationship and the speaker's fluid position within its complicated framework, Forever in Clovis seeks to raise questions about the integrity of our perceptions and what it means to call yourself human. Throughout the development of these themes, the collection is told through the perspective of a single speaker and is not limited to any particular region, but rather, takes place, primarily, in American cities, neighborhoods, and homes. A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Spring Semester 2017. February 24, 2017. America, California, Nature, Pastoral, Science, Suburban James Kimbrell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Juan-Carlos Galeano, University Representative; Barbara Hamby, Committee Member; Robert Stilling, Committee Member.Advisors/Committee Members: James Kimbrell (professor directing dissertation), Juan Carlos Galeano (university representative), Barbara Hamby (committee member), Robert Stilling (committee member).