Eldredge, Luke James, authorDungy, Camille, advisorBeachy-Quick, Dan, committee memberEmani, Sanam, committee member2022-05-302024-05-242022https://hdl.handle.net/10217/235177I eat to stay alive. But it is impossibly more than simple sustenance. It is community. It is pleasure. It is shame. It is spirituality. It is life and death, nurture and harm. Food, its production, its consumption, and the ethics it both creates and dismantles is one we literally embody. Without examination and thoughtful investigation that requires the risk of making errors, the implications of eating are both deadly and consuming. I use lyrical, confessional, narrative, and experimental poetry to deconstruct what it means to participate in an economy that is inescapably reciprocal, while fully acknowledging the ways I am complicit in both giving and receiving harm. The implications and consequences of universal infrastructures can only be recognized through the acute particular. In the need to explore the ideologies of food, I must also explore the framework for that initial concern—growing up male in the American West as well as family-of-origin. My thinking around food and eating is inextricably linked to my family's and my local culture's thinking around food, both in the ways that I respect it and in the ways I push away from it. Food, family, and growing up male in the American West triangulate into the thesis's central concern.born digitalmasters thesesengCopyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.TextEmbargo Expires: 05/24/2024