Hungry Moon

Hungry Moon is a collection of original poetry that consists of five sections. The poems are primarily linked thematically and associatively rather than narratively. The title poem, “Hungry Moon,” introduces the tension between desire and fulfillment that is a major theme of the collection. This poem sets the tone of much of the collection (dark but not despairing), and also exemplifies the collection’s post-Confessional approach. Another theme of the collection is the balancing of self-protection with the willingness to take risks. This theme comes to the foreground in the second section, which traces the speaker’s experiences of flying in a small plane with her lover/pilot. The poems in the third section are shorter and more retrospective, spoken by a somewhat jaded speaker following the dissolution of a relationship. The fourth section centers upon a single subject, the death of a friend. The poems in this section address the speaker’s experience of loss and the self-scrutiny that arises from learning of her friend’s death. Hungry Moon’s last section consists of self-portrait poems which explore the possibilities of perspective, mood, and contrast in both representational and figurative presentations of the self. While not all of these poems are titled as self-portraits (some are presented as letter poems, and others are ekphrastic), the poems extend the manuscript’s thematic consideration of the boundaries between self and other by investigating the stability/instability of the self over time and in a variety of circumstances.

This dissertation won 1st Place in the Texas Tech University Outstanding Thesis and Dissertation Award, Humanities/Fine Arts, 2013.

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