The Last Visit: Poems by Chad Abushanab, MFA A Dissertation In English/Creative Writing Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY Dr. John Poch Chair of Committee Dr. William Wenthe Dr. Curtis Bauer Mark Sheridan Dean of the Graduate School May, 2019 Copyright 2019, Chad Abushanab Texas Tech University, Chad Abushanab, May 2019 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the editors of the publications in which the following poems, sometimes in slightly different versions, first appeared: 32 Poems, “Halloween” The Believer, “Silva’s Quarry” Best New Poets, “On the Dred Ranch Road Just Off 283” Birmingham Poetry Review, “Poem Begun in a West Texas Corn Maze” Ecotone, “Boys” The Hopkins Review, “Dead Town,” “Cheating in a Small Town,” “Drinking All Night in Tennessee,” and “Plastic Men” Literary Matters, “The Dive” and “Missing” Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, “Girl Found Dead in the Sequatchie Valley” The New Criterion, “Visiting My Own Grave” The Raintown Review, “Restless” Rockhurst Review, “Toward Your Understanding” Shenandoah, “Small Funeral” Southeast Review, “The Future of the Past” Southern Poetry Review, “A Voice from the Wreck” The Stirring, “Love Poem with Five Lines Stolen from VHS Tapes” Unsplendid, “Necessary Rituals” Wildness, “Negatives Under Microscope” Acknowledgment is also due to Texas Tech University and the TTU English Department for the following recognitions and support: Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Texas Tech University 2018-2019 Graduate Student Research Assistance Grant, Texas Tech University 2017 William Bryan Gates Graduate Award in English, Texas Tech University 2017 Mary Sue Carlock/Joyce Thompson Scholarship, Texas Tech University 2016 Benjamin Rude Memorial Scholarship, Texas Tech University 2015 Helen Devitt Jones Scholarship in Creative Writing, Texas Tech University 2014- 2016 ii Texas Tech University, Chad Abushanab, May 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................ ii ABSTRACT..................................................................................................... v v I. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................... 1 1. Poetry as Fiction....................................................................................... 3 2. The Idiom of Human Spontaneity............................................................... 11 3. Contemporary Formalism: Modality of Verse and Narrative Cohesion........... 19 4. A Poetry of the American South................................................................. 30 II. THE LAST VISIT....................................................................................... 38 Negatives Under Microscope......................................................................... 39 The Factory.................................................................................................. 40 Plastic Men.................................................................................................. 41 The Way...................................................................................................... 42 Dead Town.................................................................................................. 43 Ghazal......................................................................................................... 44 Toward Your Understanding.......................................................................... 45 Missing........................................................................................................ 46 Confession: Silva’s Quarry............................................................................ 47 Boys............................................................................................................ 48 Found Dead in the Sequatchie Valley............................................................. 49 The Dive...................................................................................................... 50 The Future of the Past................................................................................... 51 To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage............................................................. 52 Cheating in a Small Town............................................................................. 53 Ghazal......................................................................................................... 54 Again.......................................................................................................... 55 Layover After Visiting My Father.................................................................. 56 Poem Begun in a West Texas Corn Maze....................................................... 57 Ghazal......................................................................................................... 58 A Haunted House......................................................................................... 59 Restless....................................................................................................... 60 Custody Denied............................................................................................ 61 Ghazal......................................................................................................... 62 Roadkill Ode................................................................................................ 63 Visiting My Own Grave................................................................................ 64 Halloween.................................................................................................... 65 Love Poem with Five Lines Stolen from VHS Boxes....................................... 66 Drive-In....................................................................................................... 67 iii Texas Tech University, Chad Abushanab, May 2019 Ghazal......................................................................................................... 68 Drinking All Night in Tennessee.................................................................... 69 Small Funeral............................................................................................... 70 Desert Elegy................................................................................................. 71 A Voice from the Wreck................................................................................ 72 Ghazal......................................................................................................... 73 Rubáiyát for My Father................................................................................. 74 Necessary Rituals......................................................................................... 75 The Landlocked Lighthouse........................................................................... 77 Love Poem with Desert and Stars................................................................... 78 On the Dred Ranch Road Just Off 283............................................................ 79 Hometown Knowledge.................................................................................. 80 The Phone.................................................................................................... 81 The Last Visit............................................................................................... 82 WORKS CITED............................................................................................... 83 iv Texas Tech University, Chad Abushanab, May 2019 ABSTRACT The Last Visit is a book of poems that primarily explores the breaking down of families: fathers struggling with violent tendencies and addictions, mothers who stand strong in the face of enduring abuse, and children who want to escape all this only to find themselves forever haunted by the habits and memories of home. Set in and around the rural South, these poems place the characters against the background of small town life, paying particular attention to how these relationships and communities erode over time. The speakers in this book range from fed-up wives to suicidal fathers, from confessing murderers to lovelorn werewolves, and from children suffering abuses to the complicated and questioning adults they ultimately become. Yet along the way, there are moments of undeniable tenderness and compassion as even the darkest characters find space for redemption and a desire to capture something beautiful in the most harrowing of moments. Additionally, the poems in The Last Visit are very much interested in poetic form, often times manifesting in traditional received verseforms like the sonnet, Ghazal, or ballad, among others. The chosen form for each poem speaks, in some way, to the world of that poem, and ideally augments the reading experience by inviting the reader to consider the specifics of its arrangement, and to read it against the language and meaning of the piece as it unfolds. v Texas Tech University, Chad Abushanab, May 2019 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1 Texas Tech University, Chad Abushanab, May 2019 For many, somewhere along the line, poetry became inseparable from non-fiction and autobiography. Readers came to expect, or even demand, that a poet’s work be a mirror held up to his or her own life and experience. It may have started with the Confessional poets, but they understood that to write a poem means