The following collection contains a mixture of semi-autobiographical verse, persona poems, and dramatic monologues. My main objectives in this thesis were to capture a balance between autobiographical details and fiction, narrative and lyric modes, and difficulty and accessibility in order to demonstrate how poetry is not need not be confined to the reductionist labels which many contemporary American poets and critics use to teach and conceive of poetry. I found that poems move easily between such binaries and are often comprised of a blend of these seemingly exclusive elements
