Knife Latitudes
Pfister, Derek J.
:
2017-08-11
Abstract
This manuscript of poetry contains three sections. The first section primarily includes poems about family landscapes, relationships, and history. These poems seek to explore past and present settings in order to understand the gradual changes and decline that this steel-belt family experiences. In section two, the poems move into neighborhood and school landscapes. This section explores the difficulties and discoveries the speaker is able to comprehend in retrospect. As in section one, the poems seek to re-enter harsh environments of the speaker’s past and depart form them with a new understanding. In section three, the scope of the manuscript widens and moves toward the speaker’s present experiences. This section explores the human body and the earth’s body and the difficulties and connection between them. The speaker seeks a new perspective throughout this section, yet this perspective is informed by the importance of the previous sections. These sections are bound together by their recurring image systems, craft techniques, and thematic contents.