William Fuller ’75
Watchword, by William Fuller ’75. Paperback, 80 pages, Flood Editions,
June 2006.
William Fuller, chief fiduciary officer of the Northern Trust Company in Chicago,
is the author of a number of books and
chapbooks, including The Sugar Borders, Aether, Sadly, and Avoid Activity.
In Watchword, Fuller plots the paths of consciousness with sensitivity
and precision.
Pivoting on what he has called “transfer points almost too elusive to name,” his
poems shift — sometimes
mid-word — between languages of commerce, the natural sciences, and 17th-century
Neoplatonism (among others). Such moments of exchange elicit both wonder and
horror; what emerges is a marriage of heaven and hell.
Faith Barrett, assistant professor of English, says, “William Fuller writes
poems that stage collisions of different kinds of diction — literary, philosophical,
corporate, and colloquial. Responding to the project of the language poets, his
work is at times playful, at times elegiac, but always committed to an exploration
of the limits and the powers
of lyric voice.”
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