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Thylias Moss

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Thylias Moss

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lisanita.dukar
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Thylias Moss

Thylias Moss (born February 27, 1954, in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American poet, writer, experimental
filmmaker, sound artist and playwright of African-American, Native American, and European heritage.
Her poetry has been published in a number of collections and anthologies, and she has also published
essays, children's books, and plays. She is the pioneer of Limited Fork Theory, a literary theory concerned
with the limitations and capacity of human understanding of art.

Youth
Moss was born Thylias Rebecca Brasier, in a working-class family in Ohio. Her father chose the name
Thylias because he decided she needed a name that had not existed before.[1] According to Moss, her first
few years of life were happy, living with her family in the upstairs rooms of an older Jewish couple
named Feldman (who Moss believes were Holocaust survivors). The Feldmans treated Moss like a
grandchild.

When Moss was five, the Feldmans sold their house and moved away. Her parents continued to live in the
house with the new homeowners and their 13-year-old daughter, Lytta, who began to baby-sit Moss after
school. Moss experienced constant harassment from Lytta and several traumatic events before the age of
nine.[1] She later said about her trauma: "I never said a word of this to anybody....I was there witnessing
things that only happened when I left that house."[1]

At age nine her family relocated, causing her to be sent to school in a predominantly white district. After
enduring bullying and racism from both her peers and teachers, she withdrew from social interaction at
school and did not speak freely in classes until many years later in college.[1] It was during this time she
gave more attention to writing poetry, an activity she had begun two years earlier.[1]

Adult years
Moss married at age 16 before attending Syracuse University from 1971 to 1973.[2] She eventually left
university due to racial tensions and entered the workforce for several years. During this time she had two
sons, Dennis and Ansted.[2] She enrolled in Oberlin College in 1979 and graduated with a BA in 1981.[3]
She later received a Master of Arts in English, with an emphasis on writing, from the University of New
Hampshire.

After finishing school, Moss taught English at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Since 1993,
she has been a Professor of English and a Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan[4] in
Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Her early work is considered part of the legacy of the Black Arts Movement, taking influence from West
African praise poetry and concerning themes of racial justice.[5] Throughout her career, her work has
become more experimental, stretching the boundaries of genre and the definition of poetry. Her fixations
still include justice, but she expanded into a fascination with text placement's effect on meaning.[6] These
experiments with form culminated in her development of Limited Fork Theory and the invention of the
POAM (product of act of making). Moss's POAMs are combinations of film and poetry, emphasizing
how text placement and movement, among other sensory elements, can enhance the meaning of a
poem.[6]

Limited Fork Theory


Moss contributed to experimental literary theory by introducing the metaphor of a fork to conceptualize
how people internalize art and literature.[6] The fork as a metaphor for understanding represents
bifurcation, and Moss argues that the branching out of the mind to understand art mimics the branching
tines of a fork. She uses the word "limited" to express that, though an observer gains understanding of art
through these bifurcated systems of comprehension, the same systems limit their understanding. Just as
one can only eat that which adheres to the tines of a fork, one can only internalize the facets of a piece of
art that adhere to these bifurcated tines of understanding.

The development of Moss's POAMs (products of acts of making) coincided with her theoretical
development of Limited Fork. These multimedia pieces use as many sensory elements as possible,
including movement, color, and sound. Moss has also expressed interest in incorporating olfactory
elements in future projects.[7] These POAMS are usually displayed in galleries, but many can be found
online in podcasts (https://soundcloud.com/forker-gryle), journals, and on YouTube. (https://www.youtub
e.com/results?search_query=Forkergirl)

The complexities associated with the epistemological application of Limited Fork Theory caused Moss to
adopt the persona of Forker Girl/Forker Gryle, pseudonyms under which she runs blogs (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20190803034201/http://www.4orkology.com/) and an Instagram account (https://www.inst
agram.com/4orkergirl/) explaining details of both her life and her theory.

Work and awards


Poetry

Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities' Red Dress Code: New & Selected Poems
(Persea Books, 2016)
Tokyo Butter: Poems (Persea Books, 2006)
Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse (Persea Books, 2004)
Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler (1998)
Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems (1993)
Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky (1991)
At Redbones (1990)
Pyramid of Bone (1989)
Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman (1983).
Prose

New Kiss Horizon (2017), a romance


Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress (1998), a memoir
Talking to Myself (1984), a play
The Dolls in the Basement (1984), a play
I Want To Be (Dial Books for Young Readers, 1995)
Awards

MacArthur Fellowship (1996)[8]


Guggenheim Fellowship (1995)
Dewar's Profiles Performance Award (1991)[9]
Whiting Award (1991)
Witter Bynner Poetry Prize (1991)[9]
Artist's Fellowship from the Massachusetts Arts Council (1987)[9]
NEA grant

References
1. Silberman, Eve, "Thylias Moss: A Poet of Many Voices and A Spellbinding Delivery" (http://w
ww.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moss/about.htm), Michigan Today, October 1995,
via Modern American Poetry.
2. Pereira, Malin (2010). Into a Light Both Brilliant and Unseen: Conversations With
Contemporary Poets. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. p. 122.
ISBN 9780820331072.
3. "Thylias Moss" (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/thylias-moss), Academy of American
Poets, poets.org.
4. "Thylias Moss" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thylias-moss), Poetry Foundation.
5. Cull, Ryan (2016). "Inexhaustible Splendor: Thylias Moss, Praise Poetry, and Racial
Politics". MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 41: 125–417 – via JSTOR.
6. "Thylias Moss" (https://stamps.umich.edu/people/detail/thylias_moss). University of
Michigan STAMPS School of Art & Design. 2020.
7. "Shadows, Boxes, Forks, and "POAMs" by Richard Siken" (https://www.poetryfoundation.or
g/articles/68901/shadows-boxes-forks-and-poams). Poetry Foundation. March 10, 2020.
Retrieved March 10, 2020.
8. Clark, Mavis. "Two Oberlin Alums Tapped as MacArthur Fellows" (http://www2.oberlin.edu/al
ummag/oampast/oam_sum96/oamsum96_macarthur.html). Oberlin College. Retrieved
March 10, 2020.
9. Brasier, Rebecca (2008). "Thylias Moss (1954-)" (http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/TMoss
GW.html). Opus 40. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20110719120140/http://www.opu
s40.org/tadrichards/TMossGW.html) from the original on July 19, 2011.

External links
Children's literature
portal

A collection of Moss's video poams (https://www.youtube.com/forkergirl)


"Shadows, Boxes, Forks, and POAMs" (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/179856), an
interview on the Poetry Foundation website.
Profile (http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/thylias-moss#/) at The Whiting Foundation.
Examples of Moss's recent print poems (http://www.friggmagazine.com/issuetwenty/poemss
tories/poetry/Moss/MossComments.htm) published in Frigg.
An online collection of Thylias Moss's poems. (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/
moss/online.htm)
Modern American Poetry information page on Moss's life and poetry. (http://www.english.uiu
c.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moss/moss.htm)
University of Michigan Department of English (https://web.archive.org/web/2012092504460
3/https://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/people/profile.asp?ID=266) page

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