Felt: Poems [Paperback]

Alice Fulton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2002

Winner of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 2001, and as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.

In this groundbreaking collection, Alice Fulton weds her celebrated linguistic freshness to a fierce emotional depth. Felt—a fabric made of tangled fibers—becomes a metaphor for the interweavings of humans, animals, and planet. But Felt is also the past tense of "feel." This is a book of emotions both ordinary and untoward: the shadings of humiliation, obsession, love, and loneliness—as well as states so subtle they have yet to be named. Reticent and passionate, elliptical yet available, Fulton's poems consider flaws and failure, touching and not touching. They are fascinated with proximity: the painter's closeness to the canvas, the human kinship with animals, the fan's nearness to the star. Privacy, the opening and closing of doors, is at the heart of these poems that sing the forms of solitude-the meanings and feelings of virginity, the single-mindedness of fetishism, the tragedy of suicide. Rather than accept the world as given, Fulton encounters invisible assumptions with magnitude and grace. Hers is a poetry of inconvenient knowledge, in which the surprises of enlightenment can be cruel as well as kind. Felt, a deeply imagined work, at once visceral and cerebral, illuminates the possibilities of twenty-first century poetry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A dizzying tapestry of essayistic, digressive and lyrical poems held together by a few symbols and obsessions, this "felt"is fabric and feeling, the colors white and gray, the "eco-speak" of botany and chemistry, the figure of Emily Dickinson, and the artistically laden symbols of a blank canvas and a fan. Fulton (Sensual Math) composes multi-page poems out of ever-expanding sentences, stretching her phrases like tightropes over the vast reaches of information: "Each line braves rejection/ of the every, edits restless/ all into a space that's still/ the space of least commitment, distilling/ latitudes in draft." The book's governing whites come to represent (among other things) fear, certainty, metaphysical absolutes, virginity, youth, and artistic perfection; these play off against the mixed shades of everyday life in works for which "nothing is separate, the entire planet/ being an unexpected example." In "About Music for Bone and Membrane Instrument" a fan's "pink folds and pleats,/ handheld compressions, corrugations of/ recluse, release" stands for the twists and turns in Fulton's own lines; "It isn't simplicity that epiphanizes me" (she writes elsewhere), "it's/ saturation." A poem about Joan Mitchell's painting White Territory stands out for its subtlety and seriousness; memorable elegies for a female relative (perhaps the speaker's mother) find Fulton having "to feel// the unaesthetic everything twist through my head." As before, Fulton's works sometimes seem stagy or overlongAless composed than performed, with both eyes on her audience; nevertheless, this may be Fulton's best book: it is at once accessible and ambitious, evasive and informative, consistently curious, and, yes, strongly felt. (Jan.) Forecast: A Macarthur "genius" grant winner who has long taught at the University of Michigan, Fulton's position in the poetry world seems assured. The book may be handsold to fans of Anne Carson and Graham; a career-assessing review in a major publication would broaden Fulton's audience.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Among the best new books due out [in 2001] is one by Alice Fulton. -- Orlando Sentinel, Dennis Loy Johnson

Fulton's best book: it is at once accessible and ambitious, evasive and informative, consistently curious, and, yes, strongly felt. -- Publishers Weekly

Fulton's best book: it is at once accessible and ambitious, evasive and informative, consistently curious, and, yes, strongly felt. -- Publishers Weekly

Fulton's dense and daring work has amazed readers since the beginning.... -- Rain Taxi Review of Books, Eric Lorberer

Fulton's poems go to the heart. -- Ruminator Review, Kate Moos

[A] worthy and exciting sequel to Sensual Math and her other previous volumes. -- The Missouri Review, Marta Boswell

[F]etishistic, wildly associative, demonically apt and simply eloquent. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review, Carol Muske-Dukes

[M]any of the hard-won lessons of Fulton's earlier books come together in absolutely moving ways. -- The Ann Arbor Observer, Keith Taylor

[R]e-mixes the aesthetic into the "unaesthetic everything" to expose new possibilities for verbal art. -- Boston Review, Barbara Fischer

[T]he power of Fulton's verbal pyrotechnics is that they precisely animate these mutable, ever-changing states. -- The New York Times Book Review, Megan Harlan

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039332236X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393322361
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #789,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alice Fulton's first fiction collection, The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories, was published by W.W. Norton in 2008. Her most recent book of poems is Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Felt was awarded the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. This biennial poetry prize is given on behalf of the nation in recognition of the most distinguished book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years. Felt also was selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 2001 and as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.

Fulton has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Michigan Society of Fellows, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been included in five editions of The Best American Poetry series and in the 10th Anniversary edition, The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997. She has received Pushcart Prizes in poetry and in fiction, the Bess Hokin award from Poetry, The Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award from Southwest Review, and the Emily Dickinson and Consuelo Ford Awards from the Poetry Society of America. Poems and Fiction also have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, The New Yorker, Parnassus, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, and many other magazines.

Alice Fulton's ten stories have been collected in The Nightingales of Troy. Two of these stories, "A Shadow Table" and "Queen Wintergreen," have been selected by Alice Sebold and Louise Erdrich for the Best American Short Stories. "Happy Dust," was awarded the Editor's Prize in Fiction by The Missouri Review. "The Real Eleanor Rigby," was selected for the Pushcart Prize XXIX anthology. And "Queen Wintergreen" was also anthologized in Cabbage and Bones: An Anthology of Irish Women's Writing. The Nightingales of Troy was a New & Recommended selection by The Boston Globe; a Discoveries feature by The Los Angeles Times; and a Featured Books interview in The Irish Times. For extensive excerpts from published reviews, please visit alicefulton.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Instant capture, February 8, 2001

By 

Robert E. Lloyd (Deerfield Beach, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Felt: Poems (Hardcover)

From the opening poem "Close (Joan Mitchell's 'White Territory')" this book dives inside you and holds court until you assume its power. This astonishing range of poems can make sparks last for what seems an eternity. "Failure" conjures up images from Henry IV, Part One, while "The Fabula Rasa" delves into the author's past in radio broadcasting, as does "Warmth Sculpture." Stop reading this review and make the purchase.