Date of Award
5-2003
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.F.A.
Degree Program
Drama and Communications
Department
Drama and Communications
Major Professor
Katrovas, Richard
Second Advisor
Macari, Anne Marie
Third Advisor
Lavender, William
Abstract
In the Dead Season is a manuscript of poetry that explores, through family narrative, the tensions between ignorance and truth, between honor and mendacity, between violation and veneration, between love and loss, between grief and transcendence. Set in rural Texas, the poems in this collection describe a harsh and unforgiving landscape seen largely, though not exclusively, through the eyes of a central child narrator. Rattlesnakes, tarantulas, drought, flood, birth, death, the poems present everyday occurrences and suggest that we often experience events before we have the context, knowledge, or emotional maturity to make sense of them in any reasonable manner. This discontinuity leaves gaps in understanding that we fill with mythologies of our own making, mythologies that both masquerade as innocence and lead us too early to toxic truths. In a world where death is commonplace, true wonder is found in surprising places.
Recommended Citation
Hansard-Weiner, Sonja, "In the Dead Season" (2003). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 15.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/15
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.