Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry

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. Process"Head Notes, Heart Notes, Base Notes"Screens: An Alchemical ScrapbookII. Poetics"Subversive Pleasures"Of Formal, Free, and Fractal Verse: Singing the Body EclecticFractal Amplifications: Writing in Three DimensionsIII. Powers"The Only Kangaroo among the Beauty"Unordinary Passions: Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of NewcastleHer Moment of Brocade: The Reconstruction of Emily DickinsonIV. Praxis"Seed Ink"To Organize a WaterfallV. Penchants"A Canon for Infidels"Three Poets in Pursuit of AmericaThe State of the ArtMain Thingsri0VI. Premises"The Tongue as a Muscle"A Poetry of Inconvenient Knowledge