If lightning struck the sun

Abstract

If Lightning Struck the Sun is a collection of poems investigating the concept of identity. These poems draw inspiration from the Confessional movement of the 1950s as well as contemporary queer poets. The central objective of this collection is the speaker’s journey to finding themselves. While writing this thesis, one of my main technical challenges was finding an order for the poems that felt cohesive and told a story; in order to meet this challenge, I connected the poems with one another through corresponding themes, images, and subjects. With this project, I hope to bring fresh images and metaphors to the world of poetry and to argue for softness in a hard world.