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Publication Date
Spring 2023
Degree Type
Thesis - Campus Access Only
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English and Comparative Literature
Advisor
Alan Soldofsky
Subject Areas
English literature
Abstract
Listen, If You Have a Minute is a collection of poems with a central focus on addiction, homelessness, mental instability—often through a socioeconomic lens—from a prevailing first-person point of view. About half of the material is situated in San José’s Midtown neighborhood and the work is divided into four sections. “Origin Stories” moves from a global, to an ancestral, then a personal perspective on legacy and experience. “Around the Block” compiles a metropolitan collage with attention to blight-amidst-plenty and individual struggle during hard times. “Neighborhood Outliers” attempts a direct and compassionate engagement with several unsheltered people living within a one-mile radius of my apartment. And though its topics are miscellaneous, the final section—“Stragglers”—devotes significant attention to addiction and mental instability before ending with a wider, more hopeful poetic embrace. The poems tend to shift, with purpose, between a serious-sincere and comic-ironic tone, making use of four modes: sonnets, semi-formal stanzas, free verse, and prose poems. Bound by its primary themes and surroundings, the collection gives special attention to present-day San José.
Recommended Citation
MacKillop, AJ, "Listen, If You Have a Minute" (2023). Master's Theses. 5409.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.cb9k-jcqx
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/5409
