Poetry--Themes, motives.

"The Light That Calls Them Back" is a collection of 23 poems completed during my
three years of graduate studies. The poems in this collection are memory based and rely
on the use of metaphor to convey emotion. These writings were compiled to demonstrate
a range of poetic styles and subject matter. Most importantly, each poem in some way
deals with the poet's relationship to different places and the memories (often hazy or
inaccurate) associated with certain settings. Additional themes present throughout these
works are the loss that comes with both death and abandonment and the relationship
among visual art and images and poetry. The voice in these poems represents the poet in
different stages of life. Many of the poems appear to deal with mystical or fantastical
elements. These represent the poet's imagination and belief in the unexplained. Some are
meant to be taken literally, while others become metaphors or evidence of the poet's
desire to escape the ordinary world.

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.