Date of Graduation
5-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
English
Advisor/Mentor
Howell, Rebecca G.
Committee Member
McCombs, Davis
Second Committee Member
Davis, Geffrey M.
Keywords
Southern Gothic poetry; childhood and trauma; myth and religion; experimental form; folk art aesthetics; narrative poetry
Abstract
This collection of poems follows a set of fictional children as they try to make sense of a rural Southern town and the gods and disasters that beset it. Emerging from the children’s wanderings are questions, but never answers, about the South, trauma, gender, and religion. The plot of this collection is a loose chiasmus, where the first thing that happens is also the last thing that happens. Everything that takes place leads, both forwards and backwards, to the inevitable flood that occurs in the center of the book. The first section is told from the perspective of the children, who miss their mother and seem to be growing bigger by the second. The second half of the book is narrated by the gods, who re-trace all that has occurred as they try to unzip what caused the flood, what destroyed the children, and who the mother is. dream eater presents the reader with a vision of the world similar to the visual folk art of creators like Howard Finster and Theora Hamblett. There is a sense of uneasiness and unfamiliarity to the work that is sometimes crude, sometimes frightening, but always charged. Like visual folk art, dream eater creates its own vision of the world that rewards the reader who chooses to step inside.
In terms of craft, dream eater contains no periods; just commas and the occasional question mark. The commas help to propel the book forward and point the reader towards the inevitability of the flood. The occasional question punctuates this pacing, bringing to the surface questions about the world that cannot be answered, and answers “we cannot bear to hear.” The syntax is heavily influenced by a sense of orality, while the diction helps conjure another world through unique and at times nonsensical idioms, objects, and strung-together lists. Parallelisms are frequently used to equate disparate things that can’t make sense together but do, a reflection of the children’s conflicting feelings about growing up in the South (“and because none of it added up, and because all of it added up…”). This allows the book to attempt to reach a better understanding of the mother, the town, and the gods, who are all complex and contradictory, evading capture.
Who (or what) is dream eater? I think dream eater is some kind of god, or maybe God, but the more I think about it the more I lose it, which is what, I think, makes them a god to me. All throughout writing this book I’ve had a quote by Carolyn Forché on my mind: “The silence of God is God.” I think this is why the horses bother the children so much. They’re always “just standing there.” The children can’t reach them, like they can’t reach the gods, the mother, or anything. But as the children grow too big–grow enormous, even–their presence itself becomes a kind of question for the world of the book as well as the reader.
Citation
Barch, S. (2025). Dream Eater. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/5801
