War and Return

<p>ABSTRACT</p> <p>WAR AND RETURN</p> <p>By</p> <p>Alexander Vartan Gubbins</p> <p><em>War and Return</em> is a collection of poetry that pivots on the conflict between loss of human life, sometimes even whole cities, and reinvention of cultural identity. In these poems, I search for and shape my own identity as a poet, while revealing my experiences as a soldier in the US War in Iraq and as the grandson of an Armenian who survived the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Turkey. These narrative poems are mainly in open form with a few in closed form as well. As I write in open form, I am not bound by line length or sound repetition. Other elements such as imagery, cataloging, and metaphor are my primary concern. With the ghazal form, however, one rooted in the Middle East, I am bound by steadfast tradition and, in these, I reach for my Armenian-ness that may have been otherwise inaccessible. On the whole, the poems in this thesis give shape to the unseen and the forgotten, for victims of war are continually discovered.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Fine Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Gubbins, Alexander

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Beverly Matherne

• poetry
• armenia
• armenian
• veteran
• war
• reinvent
• grieving
• iraq
• narrative
• soldier
• Arts and Humanities

Repository record dc:identifier

https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/33

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:commons.nmu.edu:theses-1020