Discussions of American experimental poetry's relation to emotion have
been common over the past several years, but few studies have examined
the varieties of emotional power in such writing. Moreover, such
discussion has viewed conceptually experimental and confessional
approaches as incompatible. But Trisha Low's The Compleat Purge (2013)
balances itself between conceptualism and confessionalism. It examines
emotions like boredom, fascination, and shame as it manipulates
relations of form and feeling by engaging affective repetition and
emotional excess. Developing a relationship to confessional authenticity
that foregrounds emotional vulnerability despite a possible critical
distance from the latter, Low's writing suggests that the gap between
conceptual and confessional approaches is not as wide as many assume.