Julia Spicher-Kasdorf, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Xiaoye You, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
poetry home care poems family place mortality appalachia appalachian poetry
Abstract:
Home Care is a collection of poems dealing with origin, family, mortality, and growth. The collection is organized into three sections both thematically, and (near) chronologically, following a speaker’s growth through adolescence, the illness and death of family members, and young adulthood. These sections create a narrative that invites the reader to move and grow with the speaker while investigating the ways family and origin affect the development of a sense of self and place in the larger world.
Home Care is set in rural America, particularly Appalachian Pennsylvania. Place occasionally emerges as the subject of poems in this collection, but region is predominantly expressed through colloquial syntax and diction native to the area.
The collection features quatrains, couplets, sonnets, and even a pantoum and prose poem. The multiple forms, subjects, and shifting diction and emotion aim to create an experience of change and confusion that ultimately becomes one of strengthening and growth.