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Virginia Tech

Post Everything

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This is a collection of poems that are confrontations with the self – the self as a vessel of memory (hence the “Post” in the title, in addition to its double-meaning of “Post,” as in online self-revelation), as writer, as mother of a young child, as wife, as lover, writer, psyche, self-reflexive animal. The voice is private, heightened, direct, and colloquial, engaging in unexpected imagery, figurative language, and grammatical-play, and drawing from all levels of language and culture. The poems often record the process of trying to untangle the complexity of the self at the moment of writing, and they incorporate the particulars of the moment of writing, or associations at the moment of writing, as scaffolding for self-reflection. They are philosophical in a personal sense. Some of areas of concern explored or touched on in the poems include place, privilege, God, music, contradiction, ambivalence, the intersections of pain and pleasure, family, community, isolation, connection/disconnection, romantic love, gender, sexuality, victimization, morality language, and depression, but most of all, the state and degree and struggle for self-awareness vis-à-vis these issues. Most of these poems come through a self or a self-persona, and that self is a sensitive, even volatile character – through childhood, adolescence, marriage & martial separation, and motherhood. Often, in these poems, this self seeks refuge, escape, and redemption through language and through the body. The poet also explores form and poetic mode, in disrupted or reimagined narrative, villanelle, elegy, and sonnet form.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Fine Arts
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Creative Writing
Department dc:contributor.department
English
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2011

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Tillinghast-Akalin, Julia Clare
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Hicok, Robert G.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Meitner, Erika S.
  • Roy, Lucinda H.

Subjects

dc:subject × 8

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en_US

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
etd-05032011-113229
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77476

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Tillinghast-Akalin, Julia Clare. Post Everything. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/77476