Merely Celestial: A Poetry Collection

This poetry collection examines the different means by which established forms, ideas, and cultural norms influence our decisions and perceptions, as well as themes of linguistic corruption, abandonment, and the apocalypse. The topics are broad, and so is the range of poetic forms utilized and experimented with here, including the Shakespearean sonnet, the prose poem, the villanelle and the Medieval ballad. Medieval literature comes under particular scrutiny in the longest piece, an epic poem entitled The Book of the Book that allegorically details the evolution from Old to Middle English while incorporating Biblical episodes, bob-and-wheel stanzas, modern colloquial monologues, and an Anne Sexton pastiche. Throughout all of these different scenarios, the presence of the inherited idea is sometimes ominous, sometimes attractive, but always inescapable, even when its powers are seemingly diminished, and always shapes the trajectories of the new, even when it appears as foreign or incomprehensible