Wager

Wager is a poetry collection that wrestles with the speaker's perceived failures as a woman, as a recovering addict, as a daughter to a devoted Catholic mother, as a non-traditional academic and as a sexual and damaged body. Wager features the oppression of the female body and importantly exposes how that body can be an agent of its own demise. Mothers and mothering are central to the collection's objectives and are yet another way that the speaker sees herself as inadequate, but also as secured. Wager is vernacular but also pulls from the speaker's more current experiences in academia. The collection aims to challenge what an academic is, what a mother is, what a woman is, what a lover is, etc., and does this through language as well as narrative. Formally the collection varies widely, including list poems, persona poems, prose poems, poems in a series, ultra-talk poems and highly lyrical pieces. The speaker is a playful and brutally introspective poet who writes about loss with an empowered female voice, and Wager showcases the complications of being that type of woman — self-centered and unapologetic but filled with socially seeded self-doubt. While the poems are dense with frustration and guilt, they are not helpless in the face of these emotions. They are self-aware; they choose, and while they sometimes regret, they also celebrate and accuse.

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

2020

Author dc:creator

• Williams, Adele Elise

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Hicok, Robert G.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Meitner, Erika Sharon
• Gardner, Thomas M.

• Poetry
• Poems
• Mother
• Mothering
• Body
• Wet
• Water
• Addiction
• Violence
• Love
• Relationships
• Abuse
• Flowers
• Birds
• Spirituality
• Transformation

Statement dc:rights

• This item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. Some uses of this item may be deemed fair and permitted by law even without permission from the rights holder(s), or the rights holder(s) may have licensed the work for use under certain conditions. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights holder(s).

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:25493

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/129375