Theses and Dissertations Collection

"Shutter" is a collection of poetry that explores and engages with the concept of seeing and being seen executed through the reoccurring motif of photography. The unnamed female speaker, almost always behind the camera herself in the narrative of the poems, remains in a constant struggle of identifying and understanding what can and cannot be photographed, particularly involving light, shadow, presence, and absence. The first section of the collection works to construct the narrative and introduce the speaker by setting expectations of both tone and the aforementioned photography mechanism which propels every poem. In the second section, an ethical dilemma arises that confronts the morality behind documenting the illness of the mother figure through the navigation of a complicated familial relationship. In the third and final section, the collection returns to poems largely examining the self by the speaker - a move that creates an impenetrable layer of elegiac complexity.