. . . . . . . "Electronic dissertations" . "From the introduction: \"When I proposed my honors thesis project in May 2012, I thought I would be writing narrative folklore poems set in Appalachia and coastal Maine. I wrote a proposal explaining how I see stories like Möbius strips and how I wanted to preserve the cyclical, timeless nature of provincial folklore in my poems. But I wanted the poems to surpass the subject matter, I wanted them to be unsettling. Still Lives became a collection about space, time, and things with and without skin. The witches and ghosts and creatures became mediums for theoretical concepts lifted from my academic classes. Beyond the theory, I wanted my poems to have an emotional and physical weight, but also to transcend their locations and occasions. I wanted the poems to have a tactile, visceral quality.\"" . "Still lives" .