Dance Script With Electric Ballerina
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983)
Dance Script With Electric Ballerina
(University of Illinois Press, 1996 reissue)
First published in 1983 by University of Pennsylvania Press, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina was reissued by University of Illinois Press in 1996.
Barbara Morgan: Pure Energy and Neurotic Man
Copyright © 1940, 1983 Barbara Morgan.
Recent Poems Online
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Excerpts from Reviews of Dance Script With Electric Ballerina
University of Illinois Press reissue, 1996
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983
Winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award, 1982
“In her outstanding first book of poems, Alice Fulton steers away from the ‘sense’ school, and heads along the less traveled road of verbal music. The diction is so eccentric that, as in Merrill’ poems, you never know just what word might show up next. This unpredictability is perhaps the key to Fulton’s music. She has the most unusual and entertaining voice I've heard in recent years. Reading her poems is something like listening to a set of the most spirited and peculiar jazz: you must sharpen your spirit to be moved by what is uncanny and rare.”
Matthew Gilbert
The Boston Review
“We are back in the real world, foolish, extraordinary, desirable; and articulated with poise, humour and adventure. Physical sensations are balanced against events, metaphor against recital, in a most effective way. All in all, I would situate Alice Fulton as a close verse equivalent to the new tough-and-tender realism in American fiction, many of its practitioners women, and many of them poets as well: Jayne Anne Phillips, Elizabeth Tallent, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson. She has their loners, their freaks, their cruelty, their orientation towards low-life, and their unconventional elegance and articulateness.”
Michael Hofmann
PN Review, Manchester, UK
“Fulton explores the interplay of divine mystery and scientific fact, of nature and art, of the primitive and the civilized. Morover, she achieves this high degree of intellectual substance in her work without sacrificing emotional richness; she uses traditional forms without forfeiting the energy of dissonance and chance. Fulton’ lively, distinctive style and buoyant faith in her life and time are most evident....”
Choice
“... a wonderfully eclectic and carefully crafted volume. Fulton’s is a collection about interiors and exteriors, about self-discovery and self-definition in a world whose value and significance is continually shifting. There is a rich sense of language ... a real talent for striking combinations of imagery. In a thoroughly Romantic impulse, the poet goes beyond merely recording, moving on to reshaping and restructuring what is observed, what is experienced, to produce an alternative, heightened reality that is perpetually stimulating (to poet and reader alike). These are poems in and about art and life, poems that weave the techniques of music — indeed of the several arts — into a lively and compelling fabric of experience. They are delightful, energetic poems, alive with the exhilaration of creation.”
Stephen C. Behrendt
Prairie Schooner
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
“Fulton writes with tremendous energy and imagination. Her fast-paced verse rolls off the tongue like colloquial speech, or flows like rhythms of American jazz.”
Publisher’s Weekly
“Her poems are selective autobiography, deeply explored and carefully formulated. Fulton’s distinct voice marks her as a poet to watch.”
Library Journal
“In 1983, I read a book of poems in which every single poem seemed to speak for me or to me.... The book was Alice Fulton’s Dance Script With Electric Ballerina. Sixteen years later, it continues to inspire me.”
Steven J. Lont
Grand Rapids Independent