Jorie Graham and Alice Fulton: Mavericks of excess

Jorie Graham and Alice Fulton's poetries are distinguished by their styles of maximalist excess. They depict the superabundance of the world, including fragmentary contemporary culture, scientific phenomena, and the mind in its process of apprehending. Both poets use idiosyncratic non-verbal devices to account for variables and unworded concepts. Graham's style is verbally and linearly expansive, resisting closure in its long circumlocutions. She weaves contraries and complements into a seamless whole that incorporates loose threads, "failures," and multiple subjectivities. Fulton's style is compressive, embedding heterogeneous subjects and exposing paradox linguistically and by means of satire. She employs wide ranges of diction and alludes to and parodies other written and spoken genres.