Tracks we leave

While many of the poems in my thesis address the death of my stepfather, several of them also touch on region and the geography of the Mississippi Delta, my home. Additionally, there is a longer historical narrative about the steamboat Sultana, considered one of the worst maritime disasters in American history. Primarily, my thesis attempts to interpret the varying ways in which human beings deal with guilt and loss: faith in God, for example, in "Furlongs Home," or the ritual of erecting totems for the dead in "Augur." But this manuscript is not only an attempt at creating a vestige to celebrate and remember the dead, it also examines of the fallibility of creating such a structure. I hope that the poems here find a balance between lyricism and narrative. My work is largely informed by the poetry of Langston Hughes and Yusef Komunyakaa. Their ability to create clear dramatic situations and narrative while simultaneously emphasizing the poem's musical cadence is something I am interested in mirroring. I have also learned a great deal from Atsuro Riley's lyrical narrative Romey's Order and the recent work of Bruce Snider in Paradise, Indiana. Finally, my poems owe a great deal to blues musicians such as Charlie Patton and Son House, whose music is deeply rooted in my experience growing up in the Delta