ORCID

0009-0004-6004-3528

Keywords

poetry, music, music scene, emo, dissociation, psychedelics

Abstract

The Revelations is a self-actualization in the form of a poetry collection. The speaker’s realization that reality is relative arrives through a Title IX case against an abusive boyfriend and former bandmate. Poems such as “Complainant / Respondent” use rigid legal structures to investigate the fluidity of truth and perception and how they can be manipulated. With her band on hiatus and the case propelling her into a new world, the speaker starts running DIY shows alongside a cast of characters with a shared love of music. She interrogates their realities in the character studies “On The Relative Reality Of…,” even questioning her own while confronting an adolescence rife with dissociative episodes. Her best friends–Bartender, Sound Guy, Guard Dog, and Lover–become wizards and sorcerers, fading in and out of reality and her life. The poems feel the pressure to perform, with “I am an academic weapon!” tearing itself apart between emo and academia, compressing forty-eight hours into twenty-four. The second section’s titular poem recounts a near-supernatural event that can only be relayed in biblical form: a psychedelic trip-gone-wrong that implodes, providing sudden clarity after weeks of anxiety and the news that Roommate and Lover slept together. In “Record Scratch, Freeze Frame,” the speaker must reinvent her reality yet again when it is revealed that Lover was sexually assaulted, reminding us that things are never what they seem. Resolution comes in section three’s “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Poem so We Wouldn’t Get Sued (By Fall Out Boy),” an epic weaving the chaotic events together as the speaker grieves and rebuilds her life. A coming of age and a coming of reality, this lyrical collection traverses the Central Florida music scene and follows a speaker whose untangling of trauma is equal parts horrifying and humorous.

Completion Date

2026

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Hurt, Rochelle

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

English

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Identifier

DP0053107

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