Palladium: Poems

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."