Other Names for Devotion

This work is an exploration of the ways in which grief, devotion, and haunting blend into each other. It is an approach towards memorial, using various forms and methods to call forth the ghosts situated within the poems. It’s been said that love, hunger, and grief are only separated by the illusion of distance. This project asks and attempts to answer that question of distance. It is an attempt to construct memorials wherein, using language as both an agent in the mourning rituals and a dynamic bridge between the speaker and audience, the speaker is able to conjure and converse with the many specters within. This manuscript tracks the moment in which grief metamorphosizes into the impulse to devour—just to keep the beloved close—in a dizzying chase that may never truly end. As the saying goes; we’re good at two things: mourning and eating.