Fulton, Alice. Cascade Experiment.

FULTON, Alice. Cascade experiment. Norton. 205p. c2004.0-393-32762-0. $14.95. SA

This book of selected poems invites us to engage with the wonderfully profound and innovative work of renowned American poet Alice Fulton. It includes poems taken from all five of Fulton's previous books of poetry, which include Dance Script with Electric Ballerina (1983), Palladium (1986), Powers of Congress (1990), Sensual Math (1995), and Felt (2001).

Heralded by Publisher's Weekly as "Dickinson's postmodern heir," Fulton is a poet of depth and great intellectual resources-skills that, as Cascade Experiment goes to show, have only been strengthened and refined over the course of time. Never failing to display a wide range of ideas and images, Fulton artfully crafts her poems with wit and grace; and as a result her work comes across as both bold and elegant. Her ability to manipulate and transform words proves there are no limits to the wonders of language and ensures that every poem brings readers into a realm they otherwise would never have ventured into. As Fulton writes in the poem "Warmth Sculpture": "It isn't simplicity that epiphanizes me, it's / saturation, the maximal, the interwoven / thrombosis and richness of / contributors to each morsel of what-is: this density / in which all entities / exist. It works. It wilds."

This collection is a must-have not only because it stretches the imagination and the mind but because it also serves as a good introduction to the work of a tremendously insightful poet whose work is sure to leave its mark on American poetry. Beth Lizardo, Bard College Student, NY