Desert Diptych Poems & Photographs

Abstract

The walk is a means to experience the landscape, to wander without purpose or destination, to go astray. The walk also symbolizes the inner journey, the solitary pilgrimage inside the self, the human longing for revelation and understanding. This dual function of the walk has been explored by writers throughout literary history, in poems that try to articulate the interplay of mind, body, and world that occurs during a walk. In a series of poems, I attempt to conflate poetic form with walking. And in photographs, seek to convey metaphors found in the landscape. Part myth, part autobiography, this thesis investigates the question of 'place' and the 'self as fugitive repositories for memory and meaning. As the landscape changes, physical and emotional boundaries are redefined, and the walker finds herself stranded between a 'somewhere' and a 'nowhere.' Thus exiled in the desert, the narrator observes her experience with dislocation and solitude as a way towards awakening and healing.