Sullivan, Shannon Kerri2023-05-102023-05-102023-05-09vt_gsexam:36088http://hdl.handle.net/10919/114999Sitting in a Stranger's Bathtub is a collection of poetry interested in the relationship between grief and time. It seems the more grief "happens" or rather, reiterates or transforms itself (a birth provoked by something unknown and can only be attributed to time and its maturing), the more grief splinters and splits off creating alternate dimensions in which things went a little bit differently, where something grand can be imagined like being present for a mother's death. These poems consider these worlds half by choice, in order to let those lives continue in their mundane yet miraculous ways, and half by possession. These poems seek to represent the horrible pang of deja vu that proves the existence of alternate happenings, and also justify deja vu as a sensation intended to fill the fragments of memory. In keeping with the tradition of the Confessional movement, these poems aim toward honesty, toward revealing the truth, only possible by showing the failures of memory, particularly in the presence of grief.ETDenIn CopyrightMotherwaitinggriefreachaddictionwithdrawalsdyingforgivenessGodsuspendedcrepuscularlivinglistenexistfeartherapymemory.Thesis