Postdiluvian

Abstract

Postdiluvian is a mixed-genre collection of poetry and fiction. It experiments with hybrid literary forms. Postdiluvian explores the cyclical process of writing and storytelling. Its forms highlight the dissertation's thematic movement from the transmission of stories to their transmutation. The poems and stories slowly transition from narrative works to fragmented ones as the reader proceeds through the collection, giving him/her more control over the interpretation of the texts as s/he continues to read. A polyorama--a panoramic picture split into movable sections--is the central model for the dissertation's development: The viewer, the interpreter, has the ability to shift the pieces of the polyorama, to form ten-thousand pictures. Some of the works, while fixed on the page, encourage readers, through their graphic presentation, to experiment with alternate ways of reading in the same manner that visual polyoramas encourage viewers to rearrange their segments. Postdiluvian has three sections. Each charts part of this process. Each focuses on the one of three complementary areas: mythology ("Renditions"), translation ("Glosses"), and fragmentation ("Polyorama"). "Renditions" contains poems and stories dealing with myth, the transmission and transformation of tales between speaker and listener. "Glosses" carries forward the idea of transformation but with a closer focus on language and translation. Many works in "Glosses" contain poetic examinations of Old English texts. "Polyorama" is primarily non-narrative. Instead, it presents a chain of sight, experiences, and dreams that unfold based upon a logic of association rather than of story.