Dance Script With Electric Ballarina: POEMS

by Alice Fulton

Alice Fulton's writing has
        been characterized by The New Yorker as "electrifying,"
        and the poet herself, according to Publishers Weekly, "may
        be Dickinson's postmodern heir."
      Dance Script With Electric
        Ballerina, Fulton's award-winning first book, is now considered a
        classic of contemporary poetry. On its release, reviewers
      "She achieves . . . intellectual
        substance . . . without sacrificing emotional richness. Fulton's lively,
        distinctive style and buoyant faith . . . are most evident." -- Choice
      "Her fast-paced verse
        rolls off the tongue like colloquial speech, or flows like rhythms of
        American jazz." -- Publishers Weekly
      "Fulton's distinct voice
        marks her as a poet to watch." -- Library Journal
      One of "two extremely
        impressive poetic debuts in 1983. By the time she's through, we want to
        shout 'encore!'" -- David Lehman, Newsday and The Philadelphia
        Inquirer
      "Reading her . . . you
        must sharpen your spirit to be moved by what is uncanny and rare."
        -- Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Review
      "Delightful, energetic
        poems, alive with the exhilaration of creation." -- Stephen C. Behrendt,
        Prairie Schooner
 

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

About the author

For a photo gallery, the story behind the stories, and a reading group guide for The Nightingales of Troy, please visit alicefulton.com

Reviews

[Steve Sarrica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice Fulton's Dance Script With Electric Ballerina is a dance of language drawn from the arts, sciences, mind, and soul. Lovers and family come and go throughout the collection as do dancers, singers, music, pain, and heartbreak.

"Men feared the black holes in your body and face,
knew what they put in would return as blood."
---
"Lend me your gift
for plunder so I can blaze a way
through the shrapnel and the rapture."
---
"It's a matter of perspective: yours is to love me
from a block away & mine is to praise the grain-
ness that weaves expressively: your face."

I was very fortunate to get to study poetry with Prof. Fulton during her time at the University of Michigan. I regret waiting so long to delve into her work.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fulton's strong imagery carries these precise poems. She makes careful use of line breaks. Her thoughtful poems gradually draw the reader in.

The following quote from an interview I found online with Fulton sums up her approach to poetry:
"In fact, I think of poems as having vertical depth. It’s as if prose is a horizontal structure, built across a surface, while poetry is a catacomb. Prose speeds the eye onwards, while poems resist—and purposely impede— that forward movement. Their language is so faceted—strange, rich—that it creates beautiful obstacles and sends the eye backwards over lines, enticing us to slow down and reread. Rather than pulling us forward, a poem drives us more deeply into the page. Its resistance should give pleasure; we go back because we want to experience this uncanny thing again. Maybe prose is like walking while poetry is like dancing. We walk to get somewhere, always moving forward. But we dance just to dance, and the movement sometimes goes backwards or downwards."

These poems leave plenty of space for thinking, without a struggle for comprehension.

In "You Can't Rhumboogie In A Ball And Chain",
she describes Janis Joplin's voice as
"That voice rasping like you'd guzzled fiberglass".
"Life Above The Permafrost" starts;
"All winter the trees tossed in their coma."

Her poems are about people, science, nature, and their intersection.

[Kristie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a so-wonderful book and amazing that it is a first collection - why don't other people rate it so that i'm not all alone

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anything I say will probably not do this collection any justice.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 F974d 1983