Feeling as a Foreign Language

In Feeling as a Foreign Language award-winning poet and critic Alice Fulton considers poetry''s uncanny ability to access and recreate emotions so wayward they go unnamed. How does poetry create feeling? What are fractal poetics?In a series of provocative beautifully written essays concerning the good strangeness of poetry Fulton contemplates the intricacies of a rare genetic syndrome the aesthetics of complexity theory and the need for cultural incorrectness. She also meditates on electronic biological and linguistic screens; falls in love with an outrageous 17th-century poet; argues for a Dickinsonian tradition in American letters; and calls for a courageous poetics of inconvenient knowledge.ContentsPreambleI. ProcessHead Notes Heart Notes Base NotesScreens: An Alchemical ScrapbookII. PoeticsSubversive PleasuresOf Formal Free and Fractal Verse: Singing the Body EclecticFractal Amplifications: Writing in Three DimensionsIII. PowersThe Only Kangaroo among the BeautyUnordinary Passions: Margaret Cavendish the Duchess of NewcastleHer Moment of Brocade: The Reconstruction of Emily DickinsonIV. PraxisSeed InkTo Organize a WaterfallV. PenchantsA Canon for InfidelsThree Poets in Pursuit of AmericaThe State of the ArtMain Thingsri0VI. PremisesThe Tongue as a MuscleA Poetry of Inconvenient Knowledge