ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I’d like to thank the English Department at UWO, especially Professor Laura Jean Baker, Dr. Stewart Cole, Professor Douglas Haynes, Dr. Ron Rindo, and Dr. Christine Roth, as well as former Professor Pam Gemin and Dr. Paul Klemp. Their encouragement went a long way. Additionally, Tara Pohlkotte and the regular group of participants at Storycatchers live events, where I read early versions of many of these pieces to attentive and empathetic audiences. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate and undergraduate students at UWO, as well as many of my personal friends, for reading drafts, offering feedback, and putting up with me and my many shortcomings. Especially Chloé Allyn, Adam Bartlett, Lyz Boveroux, Tanner Kuehl, and John Pata. Thanks to all of my parents, who got me as far as they could. It was a real team effort. Some of these pieces have appeared elsewhere: “Saturday Pancakes & Hash at Perkins” was printed in the Spring 2018 issue of Bramble Lit Mag. A different form of “Henry Wakes Up” was published in Issue 34 of Inkwell Journal, an excerpt of “Let’s Not Be Ourselves” appears in Issue 2 of Wilde Boy, and the full version of “Let’s Not Be Ourselves” appears, alongside work from many of my colleagues and friends, in the 2019 issue of The Bastard’s Review. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... ii CRITICAL INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1 HENRY WAIT ......................................................................................................... They all died before I got clean. ................................................................... 14 Henry Wakes Up ........................................................................................... 15 Stop Calling Him the Monster ...................................................................... 25 She Makes Me Nervous ................................................................................ 26 UNTITLED ................................................................................................... 43 To Carry a Stone ............................................................................................ 44 Penance ......................................................................................................... 50 Like Always .................................................................................................. 54 Sick of Being Sick ........................................................................................ 56 He Couldn’t and He Knew It ........................................................................ 58 I Think You Broke It ..................................................................................... 62 Love Lets Go ................................................................................................. 66 Mummies of the World ................................................................................. 70 The Last Laid Eggs of a Dead Chicken ........................................................ 76 Suddenly It Was Clear .................................................................................. 77 No One Can Help Anyone ............................................................................ 83 Some Things Change .................................................................................... 85 There’s Always Something ........................................................................... 93 Compulsion: .................................................................................................. 98 Oh, and Another Thing ................................................................................. 103 Where It Went ............................................................................................... 107 To Make a Meth Pipe .................................................................................... 108 Something Else, Anything ............................................................................ 109 Wait for It ...................................................................................................... 123 Absolution ..................................................................................................... 126 Now What ..................................................................................................... 128 The Blossoming Rose ................................................................................... 129 Let’s Not Be Ourselves ................................................................................. 131 Saturday Pancakes & Hash at Perkins .......................................................... 149 Always Looking ............................................................................................ 150 WORKS CONSULTED ........................................................................................... 154 iii 1 I Don’t Want to Do This Anymore: A Critical Introduction to Henry Wait “In the morning I awoke, decided that I should do more physical exercise, and began at once. I did several bending exercises. Then I washed my teeth, tasted blood, saw pink on the toothbrush, remembered the advertisements, and decided to go out and get some coffee.” -John Fante, Ask the Dust (I genuinely considered killing myself, rather than write this introduction.) My thesis is an interwoven collection of autobiographical poetry and prose which portray my experiences as a drug addict. Particularly, how I started and how I stopped using drugs, potential causes and consequences of such a life, and a nuanced look at how these habits affect a person’s relationships, both platonic and romantic. The memoir starts with a first-person protagonist who discusses the idea of writing in the third person, and pretending to be someone named “Henry.” We then shift into a first-person story where the speaker clearly identifies themselves as Henry, then we go back to an anonymous first person, and so on. The reader should see by now, rather clearly, that it doesn’t really matter who the speaker is. What matters is that the narrator is conflicted and multi- faceted. Lines such as “all these parts of other people,” and titles like “Let’s Not Be Ourselves” directly demonstrate this. The rest of the manuscript alternates between third and first person, as appropriate to the content and what the speaker hopes to convey. Overlapping key memories and themes help to remind the reader that it’s all the same 2 person. Along the way, poetry is used to indicate major shifts in content, time, theme, or tone. This helps to suggest that the collection has been carefully orchestrated, and that the fragmented pieces will weave together to create a much larger narrative. You will find here, everything I have learned in my time at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I wrote “Henry Wakes Up” before I was officially enrolled, and it’s all instinct. Much like Arturo Bandini, John Fante’s fictional stand-in, there is a perpetual war within myself, between pride and doubt. Moreover, like Bandini, or the artist in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, the struggle to write is one with the struggle to survive. The two are intertwined. Within Henry Wait, the act of writing is used as a plot device, to process trauma, and as a larger sort of metaphor. The writing stands in at times for the process of recovery, especially the 12-step model. Through his commitment to writing, my character practices faith, confession, moral inventory, amends, etc. There is much in the book that overlaps my life, and you could call it memoir, but this distinction is trivial to me. I find the need to fact check as a qualification of memoir distracting. This will be peripherally discussed in my piece, “Mummies of the World.” I wanted to write a book that I would actually read, and I’ve only been able to finish one or two memoirs in my life. I put them down. I put down many things. For me, a well-crafted character, an instinctual feeling of depth, true dialogue: these things go much further than plot, conflict, or many of the expectations we place on traditional fiction. If I can’t stomach memoir, and I’m bored by strict fiction, where does that leave me? There’s poetry, but my obsession with meaning, my inability to reduce something to aesthetic concerns, the over-arching narrative that compels me to write, my…whatever problem it is in my brain, something keeps me 3 unsatisfied by poetry. I know that others can do it better than me. One collection in one hundred, something like James Wright’s The Branch Will Not Break, can keep my attention and when it does, it thrills me, warms me. I find something to admire in every genre, and yet, the restrictions of form leave me unfulfilled. I believe that the work should show what I’ve learned. That the work alone can reflect how hard I have tried to write, revise, sculpt, and present my life as a literary achievement. In fiction, we are taught to show, not tell. In poetry, we should craft images that leave the reader with a lasting impression. We don’t tell them how to feel. In memoir, we present our lives in a way with which the readers might identify, might see themselves through us. We don’t convince them of the lessons we’ve learned; we show them. Now that I’ve done that, I’ve shown you these things in Henry Wait, I’m being asked to tell you what they are. They’re right there, in the story you’re about to read. It’s all right there. I