Abstract
Writing is the process by which a writer explores self and her relationship to the world. There are several occurring themes in this thesis that explore this idea. A few of the works written in the early stages of my writing career revolve around the politics of race, gender, and class stratification as they unfurl in the urban community. Latter poems speak more to larger ideas concerning human conditions such as: greed, frailty, reliance, and desire amongst other things. Not only do themes become internal, as skill and craft are acquired, rhetorical devices become internal as well. While earlier poems rely on obvious musicality, latter poems consciously deploy line breaks and metaphor to open poems to numerous meanings and interpretations, so that not only is the writer familiar with the contextual landscapes of her poems, but readers are as well.