Knowlton_Thesis_Dilettante_Tattoo.pdf

<p>This thesis is a book length collection of poetry. Divided into five sections, the book </p> <p>follows a fractured self as it relates to romantic partnership, friendship, sexual trauma, political </p> <p>identity, and other factors. The first section introduces the different paradigms the speaker spends </p> <p>the rest of the book trying to understand her role within, exploring themes such as the ecstasies </p> <p>and let-downs of friendship, sexuality arrested by trauma and body-image, and anxieties about </p> <p>climate disaster and economic collapse. The second section grounds the speaker’s experience of </p> <p>dissociation in her college years. The third section continues to develop themes from the first two </p> <p>sections with an emphasis on the speaker’s relationship to language and its limitations. The fourth </p> <p>section, the only standalone sequence of poems in the collection, recounts a set of circumstances </p> <p>in which the speaker must reconcile her different factions of self during a crisis. The fifth and final </p> <p>section presents a speaker on the doorstep of acceptance of self, attempting to find stasis.</p>