Palladium: Poems (National Poetry Series Books) [Hardcover]

Alice Fulton (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fulton's new poems, chosen by Mark Strand as one of five winners in the National Poetry Series, embody the principle of poetry as an act of discovery. Fulton's mutable images open inexorably onto new and different ones, creating a sort of psychedelia of impressions and experiences. The poetic logic is at times reminiscent of Cynthia Macdonald, as, for example, in "Orientation Day in Hades," where the fate of the damned is an eternity of pepper-picking, or "Fictions of the Feminine: Quasi-Carnal Creatures from the Cloud-Decks of Venus," where an intellectualized strip-joint stands in for the divine comedy. But Fulton is also deeply enamored of the red herring, of complex double entendre and forced ambiguity and of Pickwickian shifts in direction and emphasis that keep the reader puzzling. The diction that pulls off so many feats of magic ranges from high to low, densely poetic to colloquial, and is a wonder of its own. Fulton has received substantial recognition within the literary community, and this book should establish her among the poetry-reading public as an important young writer.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

Fulton's second collection, selected by Mark Strand for the National Poetry Series, fulfills none of the promise of her first volume, Dance Script with Electric Ballerina. The majority of these poems have little substance. How can one get excited, for example, at the idea of "Orientation Day in Hades"? The various personae"The Cocktail Waitress," "The Stripper," et al.are too general to be affecting, while attempts at autobiography or family history are cheapened by arbitrary images and superficial associations. Even Fulton's technical talents, remarkable in her first volume, disappoint here, and the form seems reminiscent of American poetry in the 1940s. The overall themethe modern woman's search for some valid form of faithunfortunately fails to unify these scattered narratives. Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (June 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252014510
• ISBN-13: 978-0252014512
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,425,573 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

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotion through science to words, June 2, 2001

By 

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

This review is from: Palladium: POEMS (National Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Those familiar with Alice Fulton's later works should not miss this exquisite collection of poems. The multiple meanings of "palladium" are reflected in the many layers of her inventive approach to language. From the opening poem "Babies," she forces connections previously unknown and in doing so makes one feel a renewed sense of what English can do. Look into the crystal called "Works on Paper" with its alliteration ("kisses like collusions") and see traces of Clifford Odets ("dears like daggers"). Her attraction to science as a source of metaphor appears eloquently in "The New Affluence", and the allusion to the museum world found in her latest collection (Felt) is foreshadowed in "Where are the Stars Pristine". As with the photographic process she describes in the preface to Part IV of this book, these poems display "beautiful rich blacks unobtainable with silver."