Pieces of my Thesis

For graduation, I am writing an honors thesis. My major is English - Creative Writing, so I am working on a creative poetry project. I am writing a collection of somewhere around forty poems, which must be finished for my defense in early April. It has become a very present topic in my mind, and I have found that I do my best brainstorming while I am in another class. My notes are littered with various topic lists and adjectives and structural ideas. I think the most challenging part is making each poem different. My poetry is free verse, so the goal is to vary the structure of each line length, stanza break-up, general piece length, etc.

Here are a couple of pieces of my recent work. I am still a long way off, but I feel like I am making progress. And actually having fun with it. Fall is the perfect time to be writing.

Gnats swarmed like floating pixie dust -

cluttering the thick Southern air,

silently drifting away in the dusk of an October evening.

--

This porcelain doll

with hand-painted lips,

carefully-curled hair,

an elegant dress,

dainty hands,

unaging skin

sits in a glass case

and smiles with the secret

of a crack in her heel

hidden by the shiny black Mary Janes.

--

It spins downward

this tiny fairy

born of a maple

by the breeze.

I pick up another,

examine the fragile veined wing

attached to a perfectly curved body

Then let it fly,

watch it pirouette in the air,

spiraling stopped only by dirt.

--

The current opening line I am working on forming into a poem:

I have lived my life as a lightning bug in a mason jar