Alice Fulton here offers beautifully crafted essays on poets and poetry, emphasizing the power of estrangement that gives lyric much of its interest. Emily Dickinson plays an important role in this book, but above all the reader will find elegant and telling formulations about poetry's exploration of possibilities of feeling.

Let's keep it simple: this is a challenging but accessible and rewarding book. It's not surprising that some professional reviewers have carped; the book takes them (often deservedly) to task for preaching "karaoke poetics," parroting with increasing volume and decreasing originality things that were said -- and tired -- a decade ago. Fulton's chapters on her own poetry and on Dickinson are outstanding, but the whole rewards even a casual reading. Though it's prose in format, the book is still a poem -- a fractal poem -- in the way it plays with its subject matter, diverges on flights of fancy and whimsy, reveals the poet as a person rather than a cold auctorial voice, etc.

Not since I read Wallace Steven's 'The Necessary Angel' 25 years ago have I felt such a wide-ranging intelligence in a book of essays on poetry. Fulton uses theories of science in absolutely startling ways. Readers with any interest in rich metaphors will find much here that is positively exciting and new. Her two essays on what she's calling "fractal verse" are solid, thoughtful, and full of possibilities for where poetry can take us. So far as I know, no poet has ever before described the "poem plane" and how poets are at the threshold of "breaking" through it. To me, this is as significant as Pound's idea of "breaking" the pentameter was when it was first proposed. This book is the work of a true visionary.

It seems like Alice Fulton can bring anything into a poem and make it work. In these poems, for example, there's Elvis Presley, faked orgasms, TV-reruns. But she's not just grabbing images from popular culture to make the poems accessible - she's using them, it seems to me, because they're as much a part of our world, our ways of knowing and feeling, as classical myths, which are also here. (See her fantastic reinterpretation of Daphne and Apollo in the sequence called "Give:") And what's as wonderful to me is the lushness of these poems, the extravagance of language, the way Fulton builds up these crystal-like surfaces from line to line or stanza to stanza and makes them tilt, twist, dance. Alice Fulton's poems are exciting!

Sensual Math is an exquisite book. Alice Fulton's love affair with language is thrilling; it's also important. Sensual Math can make you believe (again) in the power of every syllable, and not to "capture" or "master" experience, but to give ourselves up to the hearbeat of the world.

Wormser's When is an absolutely stunning and wondrous collection. In these poems you will meet unforgettable characters, and experience heart-breaking episodes of life in this late 20th Century. As deeply crafted as they are felt, the poems in When reward rereading without requiring it for understanding. If you teach, use these poems--students respond to them, and they are solid, graceful and worthy models. If you just love poetry, don't waste another day deprived of the excellent company of Baron Wormser's When!

I love this book. I have heard Baron Wormser read twice, which makes it all the better (he's a great guy) and the book is worth it for the last poem alone, A Quiet Life, which is affectionately known as "the egg poem". Everyone needs to read that poem. The rest of his poems are honest and well written, not cloying or in excess. And as for the egg poem, there seems to be some sort of deep, meaningful philosophy portrayed in a few wonderful lines.

How does one convey the sense of what it means to write poetry? Read "Your Card Read 'Poet-Mechanic'" in this volume to understand the power of Alice Fulton's work. How can one conceivably write a poem about dust? Read "Toward Clairvoyance" to appreciate her brilliance. This book is a work that grabs your instinct and won't let go.

From the opening poem "Close (Joan Mitchell's 'White Territory')" this book dives inside you and holds court until you assume its power. This astonishing range of poems can make sparks last for what seems an eternity. "Failure" conjures up images from Henry IV, Part One, while "The Fabula Rasa" delves into the author's past in radio broadcasting, as does "Warmth Sculpture." Stop reading this review and make the purchase.

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."

I love this book! It was the first book on organization I ever purchased, and I wouldn't be without it. It makes the awesome task of decluttering your entire home very manageable. The process is broken into easy steps, and once you get going, you can't believe you lived with clutter all your life prior to buying this book. I've read many other books, but this one is one of the best. I do have one caution. The first time I read the book, and went through the process, I followed every "rule." Basically, their motto is, "Get rid of everything you don't use, like, have room for, need or want." I got rid of binoculars (because I hadn't used them up to that point), a set of ivory dominoes (that I didn't know were ivory, until after I sold them,--because I didn't play dominoes), an antique 1 cent NYC parking meter (because it was my husbands before we got married, and we lived in a small apartment, and I had know emotional attachment to it, etc. So there are some things you keep, just because, even if you don't need them or think you don't have room.

This book was a huge help. They help you to look at EVERY area of your home. The book is laid out very simple and you can skip over the chapters that don't pertain to your own home. They did offer some advice that I don't agree with (I don't agree with getting rid of EVERYTHING) and the idea of hanging drawstring bags on the inside of every closet door?? (I think that sounds a little tacky.) But, other than that this book is a quick read, which is helpful so you can get started right away! I defintly recommend this book to anyone trying to get organized!

I've read many books on how to organize, how to declutter, etc. but have found none to be as straight forward and helpful as this one. The authors do not spend too much time trying to entertain, they teach. Perhaps there are many others out there who are not messy as much as they are overwhelmed with where to put stuff. This book helps!