Date of Award
Spring 5-8-2017
Document Type
Honors Project
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
English, Linguistics, and Communication
First Advisor
Bylenok, Laura
Major or Concentration
English (Creative Writing Concentration)
Abstract
Nature versus nurture? Both principles recognize a facet of inheritance that dictates the development of personhood: there is genetic inheritance and there is acquired inheritance. I have used poetry to grapple with the narrative of my late sister and how her death became an acquired inheritance. Meaningful as it was to write through grief, I came to resent how her body -- the color of her hair, the tattoos -- became incessant images in my poems, like a default. I doubted whether I could write without her, my inescapable inheritance. This project explores the inheritance of bodies and faith, and the deaths and resurrections of both. In seeking to resurrect the dormant poetic reflex in me, the project saw the resurrection of old topics of obsession (loss, surgery) and topics currently repressed (faith, aging). The resulting chapbook loosely applies poetic forms to simultaneously study and challenge the restraints of externally imposed inheritance.
Recommended Citation
Morgan, Hannah, "Preserve Her Form" (2017). Student Research Submissions. 147.
https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/147