A MEDITATION ON I, WE, AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN "ONLY WE CAN PULL"

<p>In a society focused on the individual, how is community formed? As individuals predisposed to the built-in barrier of our body, our skin, how do we mediate between the self and the external? During this mediation on the barriers between our body, ourselves, and the outside world, how is consciousness simultaneously conflicted and built upon? What does it mean to be alive, to be a complex individual surrounded by a multitude of complex individuals? Can we, as a society, learn to focus balance the community and the individual? ONLY WE CAN PULL attempts to answer these questions through a series of first-person singular “I” poems, first-person plural “we” poems, and a range of second- and third-person poems interspersed throughout. The poems in this collection show language as a transformative force, able to shape consciousness, depending on the lens and distance through which one views a person, experience, or moment. In the hopes, ONLY WE CAN PULL is a sample-sized collage foregrounding the multiple, fragile paths that lead to the deceptively simple four-letter word “life.”</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Level thesis:degree_level

Project

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Jeffredo, Allyson Elizabeth

Contributors dc:contributor

• Delgado, Juan

• consciousness
• we
• artist statement
• poetry
• southern california
• community

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/321

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu:etd-1360