dissertationAppendices Pulled from a Study on Light comprises three sections. The first section focuses on the Greek island of Siphnos. The middle section focuses primarily on medieval illuminated manuscripts. And the final section (re-)marries foci and material from the previous two sections. While the first two sections discuss disparate subjects, they share the topical concerns of history, gold, replication, religion, ritual, miracles, the Virgin Mary, and light. They are also unified in their collage methodology and in their thematic exploration of perception, aura, light, ethics, mystic experience, and the indeterminate sublime within both compressed lyric modes and fragmented nonfiction essays. The final section further develops and fuses the manuscript's thematic explorations in a verse-form essay. Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light makes use not only of verse and prose but also of image. Several "ekphrastic" poems respond to images of illuminated manuscripts. The images and the prose fulfill a similar function: they moor the project. The images ground the poems referentially, at least momentarily, and the prose provides representational fixedness. Off of these concretizing forces, the poems are free to bounce, descant, play, diverge, harmonize, elaborate, conflict discordantly, comment, or veer off entirely. I hope my poetry structures itself not according to argument or narrative but to virtues of the manner of its movement and to the sequences of its sounds
