Acknowledgements

First and foremost thank you to Dr. Moore for being the center of inspiration for poetic endeavors and for teaching me for 2 years. I really learned to use my words carefully and to consider every aspect of what I write down in her class. This 9999999% would not be possible without her!

Thank you to my friends that exchanged poems with me for editing outside of class. A lot of these conversations really helped shape the poems! These kind people are Tanvir, Rahul, Caleb, Avery, and David.

Thank you to The City College of New York Poetry Outreach Center for hosting an amazing yearly poetry festival that I got to attend. I had the opportunity to read one of my poems out loud to a decently sized live audience (real people!!) and even got to meet their guest poet Hadara Bar-Nadav! It was a great exposure into the kinds of communities that poetry fosters.

Last but not least, thank you to everyone (not listed above) that has touched, looked, read, smelled, or thought about any of my poems. Poetry is so much cooler when someone else reads your work! I will try to list as many people as I can think of: Lucas, Corwin, Andy, Maya, Armistead, Zachary, Jed, Calvin, Gordon, Orlin, Nate, my parents, and my grandparents.