Instincts of My Own

Date

2017-01-05

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa

Abstract

Instincts of My Own explores how family, friendship, and love irrefutably shape the present-day perception of self. The poems wind in and out of actual and imagined space, which is determined by the demands and restrictions that are repelled or submitted to. In 72 pages, the reader is taken from a crab apple orchard in upstate New York to the replica Trojan Horse in Troy, Turkey; from adolescence to adulthood, from first love to first love-making to first heartbreak, from familial bliss to familial loss, and ending in a place somewhere between optimistic trajectory and the fear of no more firsts. In the tradition of bildungsroman, the manuscript exposes the constant struggle between masculine bravado and unabashed sentimentality. Instinct of My Own demonstrates impulses toward storytelling, musicality, colorful imagery and lyricism, as the collection attempts to convey the human spirit by earnestly exploring the learned instincts of a single human.

Description

Keywords

Poetry, Bildungsroman

Citation

DOI

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