Date of Award

Summer 8-19-2022

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Advisor

Jennifer Moxley

Second Committee Member

Carla Billitteri

Third Committee Member

Hollie Adams

Abstract

The poems of The Day the Day Fell Asleep were written across 2020-22 in Oxford, England, and Orono, Maine, in consultation with and under the advisement of the poet Jennifer Moxley. The primary themes of the collection are the language of dreams, and the language of reality, and the possibilities of meeting places between the two. This thesis is prefaced by an introduction, Statements Toward a Poetics, that draws on ideas from poets including May Sarton, Yves Bonnefoy, and Wallace Stevens, to begin outlining a poetic state of awareness that informs the concerns of many of the poems in the collection. “If they are more awake than the day is,” as my Statements suggests, “poets can pierce through the veil that seems to separate sleep from reality.”

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