A book of prose, poetry, and visual elements which embraces a tension between Midwestern realism and bucolic lyricism, absence and presence, letter and hand; moreover, the sounds and silences between the hearing and the deaf as seen through an appropriated “I.” My goal is for the reader to notice how absence occupies the page, to in turn cause the reader to wonder how silence functions in-between sections, how it activates in everyday life, how it purposed the narrative past depicted in the book. I enhance this later hope through the utilization of paratactic style to empower the transitions between a sequence of hazy images that evoke not only the lake-effected experience of the Michigan from which I came, but also the elusive task of conjuring memory itself. My hope is that the content asserts a pastoral brand of banality while the hands of the manual alphabet embody a sense of the senses (sight, hearing) and the lack thereof (silences, deafness) while interpreting through a blurring of experiences where one sense doesn’t serve; where one alphabet doesn’t suffice.
","abstract_html":"<p>A book of prose, poetry, and visual elements which embraces a tension between Midwestern realism and bucolic lyricism, absence and presence, letter and hand; moreover, the sounds and silences between the hearing and the deaf as seen through an appropriated “I.” My goal is for the reader to notice how absence occupies the page, to in turn cause the reader to wonder how silence functions in-between sections, how it activates in everyday life, how it purposed the narrative past depicted in the book. I enhance this later hope through the utilization of paratactic style to empower the transitions between a sequence of hazy images that evoke not only the lake-effected experience of the Michigan from which I came, but also the elusive task of conjuring memory itself. My hope is that the content asserts a pastoral brand of banality while the hands of the manual alphabet embody a sense of the senses (sight, hearing) and the lack thereof (silences, deafness) while interpreting through a blurring of experiences where one sense doesn’t serve; where one alphabet doesn’t suffice.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Knights, Samuel Clare"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Selah Saterstrom"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2014,"date_issued":"2014-06-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2014-06-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:01:25Z","subjects":["Creative writing","Poetry","Arts and Humanities"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright is held by the author. This work may only be accessed by members of the University of Denver community. The work is provided by permission of the author for individual research purposes only and may not be further copied or distributed. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
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"],"dc:subject":["Creative writing","Poetry","Arts and Humanities"],"dc:title":["The Manual Alphabet"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:01:25Z"}