Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
8-2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
English
Major Professor
Iliana Rocha
Committee Members
Cornelius Eady, Benjamin Lee, Maurice Moore, Iliana Rocha
Abstract
This project is a book-length, prosimetric poem that brings confessional sensibilities to the formal legacy of projectivist poetics. Inspired by Charles Olson’s “Projective Verse,” Reach: A Poem gathers a chorus of secondary voices through epigraphs and interpolations that illuminate the speaker’s own voice. This allusive material supports the personal, however, as the poem considers the ethics of lyrical and confessional forms of representation throughout its exploration of familial narratives and memory. The task of Reach, therefore, is to claim an inheritance of literary and familial predecessors who co-create a poetics of imaginative empathy, where all subjects receive care and tenderness in their representation.
Recommended Citation
Reed, Gabriel A., "Reach: A Poem. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2025.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/12664