The Grief You Can Swallow and the Rage You Can't

"The Grief You Can Swallow and the Rage You Can't" investigates the evolution of elegiac form through a collection of interconnected poems exploring contemporary loss. The manuscript develops new poetic architectures for expressing grief, employing multiple formal strategies including clinical studies, psalms, concrete poetry, and variant realities. Through the lens of personal loss the collection examines how traditional elegiac containers strain to hold modern experiences of mourning. The work engages with established forms like the ghazal and tanka while simultaneously developing experimental structures that challenge conventional approaches to grief poetry. Central to the manuscript is the metaphor of mutation, both in its exploration of cancer and in its formal innovations. The collection's structure moves from a communal invitation to a private dreamscape, ultimately ending without punctuation to suggest grief's resistance to closure. By integrating clinical language with raw emotion, developing rage as a distinct poetic dialect, and creating hybrid forms that bridge presence and absence, the manuscript proposes new possibilities for elegiac expression in the contemporary era.

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

2025

Author dc:creator

• Dorrah, Kapreece

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Joseph, Janine Alissandra Fernandez

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Terazawa, Sophia Emi
• Patel, Soham Suresh

• contemporary elegy
• grief poetry
• rage
• experimental forms
• mutation
• clinical poetry
• memory
• trauma
• cancer metaphor
• visual poetry
• psalms
• tanka
• ghazal
• African American poetry
• hip-hop poetics

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:42427

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/123903