A lot of you know that I've been writing a thesis for the English Honors Program here at Georgetown, and I ended this semester by submitting a draft of the first twenty pages. I've been working on this project since last spring, so completing such a large chunk felt really gratifying.
For these past few months, I have put my heart and soul into my thesis. I work on it a little bit every day (a lot, most days), and even now that I'm roughly halfway through, it still has a long way to go. Still, I felt like showing a little sneak peak, since a lot of friends have expressed interest in my topic.
My thesis is a collection of meta modernist poetry (if you're unfamiliar with millennial poetics, Bridget Sellers breaks it all down in an amazing essay here). It explores a variety of topics, including face-interface-face interactions, millennial communication of love and sincere emotions, and how changes in technology, college hookup culture, and more have affected these matters. I ask my reader, "are drunk texts the new love poems?", and while it may sound like a joke, I'm semi-serious.
In a world where millennials are more concerned with their online presence than their physical and emotional selves, I wonder (a bit over dramatically) if a drunk text is as closer to honest communication as we get. You certainly won't see me crafting a sonnet to a boy I like anytime soon, but a drunk text? It will likely have typos, but it will definitely have sincerity. That honest communication of emotion - and millennial frustrations over how to obtain and upkeep it - is the main exploration point for my writing, and I've really enjoyed getting to focus on a topic that myself and my peers can identify with.
In the process of writing these pieces, I did a little more research than just getting drunk and texting (but I truthfully did lots of that, too). I studied concept art, confessionalism, autobiography, metamodernism, alternative lit, digital realism and internet linguistics, just to name a few focuses. I also experimented with a bunch of new and exciting forms for my pieces. The project includes visual poems, one-liners called Texts and Sexts, micropoems called Honest Tinder Bios, and list poems called Messages to the Digitally Preoccupied. Stand-alone, traditional lyric poems (like the ones I've photographed here) are referred to as One Night Stands.
If you'd like to read the draft of my first twenty pages - and keep in mind the word draft, as it will most definitely change, and some is very much at risk of being removed altogether - you can find it on my portfolio site here. Like I said, this project is so incredibly near and dear to my heart, so feel free to check it out, but keep in mind that it will certainly not be everyone's cup of tea. With that said, however, I'll keep my fingers crossed that it makes you a metamodernism lover like me, and we can drunk text all about it later. Sound good?
