Unhistorical

Abstract

This creative dissertation, Unhistorical, draws from historical narrative, confessional poetry, and detective fiction to tell the story of a contemporary romantic relationship that begins in Scotland and falls apart in America, as the narrator finds herself in the role of spectator to her partner’s genius. Many of these poems draw from the elegiac tradition, following a speaker who is, at turns, tourist in and historian of a landscape that is foreign to them. The middle section of this manuscript, entitled “The Resurrectionists,” follows an alternate version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Watson as they journey to solve a mystery in Scotland while grappling with their own anguished friendship.