Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
English
Date of Award
5-2023
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Scott Honeycutt
Committee Members
Isabel Gomez-Sobrino, Jesse Graves
Abstract
Food is a universal human necessity, yet food often serves more than a biological purpose as it informs individual and communal identities, and even facilitates memory. This thesis explores personal memory, the development of identity, and an almost reverential connection to nature in several food poems by Li-Young Lee in Rose (1986) and Behind My Eyes (2008). Born in 1957, Lee has been writing poetry since he was young, studying under Gerald Stern in the late 1970s, and he is known for writing sublime, transcendent yet incredibly accessible and expressive poetry. This thesis gives an overview of food studies and establishes food in Lee’s poems — principally fruit, shared meals, and lonely meals — as the central image, signifier, or as Roland Barthes might call it, the myth that allows the speaker of these poems to metaphorically fulfill the aphorism, “you are what you eat.”
Document Type
Thesis - embargo
Recommended Citation
Liszka, Claire, "Consuming the World: Poetic Appetite, Memory, and Identity in Li-Young Lee’s Food Poems" (2023). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 4213. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/4213
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.