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The Nightingales of Troy

The Library of Congress

Bobbitt Prize Statement for Felt

“Full of animated, charged poems, Alice Fulton’s latest collection sizzles with logophilia and tropes, is blessed with the kind of direct wiring between sensation and language, feeling and form, that strikes first with physical and then with intellectual and emotional wallop. Hers is a poetic sensibility at once remarkably comprehensive and remarkably precise, and felt; her best book so far is possessed of great velocity, great staying-power.”
— David Baker, Eamon Grennan, and Heather McHugh

Bio Note

Alice Fulton’s first fiction collection, The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories, was published by W.W. Norton in July. Her most recent book of poems is Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Felt (W.W. Norton 2001), was awarded the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. This biennial poetry prize is given on behalf of the nation in recognition of the most distinguished book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years. Felt also was selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 2001 and as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her other books include Sensual Math (W.W. Norton); Powers Of Congress (Sarabande Books reissue 2001); Palladium (University of Illinois), winner of the 1985 National Poetry Series and the 1987 Society of Midland Authors Award; and Dance Script With Electric Ballerina (University of Illinois reissue 1996), winner of The 1982 Associated Writing Programs Award. A collection of prose, Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry, was published by Graywolf Press in 1999.

She has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Michigan Society of Fellows, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been included in five editions of The Best American Poetry series and in the 10th Anniversary edition,The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997. She has received Pushcart Prizes in poetry and in fiction, the Bess Hokin award from Poetry, The Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award from Southwest Review, and the Emily Dickinson and Consuelo Ford Awards from the Poetry Society of America. Poems also have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, Parnassus, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, and many other magazines.

Her short story, "Queen Wintergreen," was selected by Louise Erdrich for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories and anthologized in Cabbage and Bones: An Anthology of Irish Women's Writing. Another story, "Happy Dust," was awarded the 1997 Editor's Prize in Fiction by The Missouri Review. "The Real Eleanor Rigby," was selected for the Pushcart Prize XXIX anthology.

Joseph Klein's computer music for three of Alice Fulton's poems premiered in the University of North Texas Center for Experimental Music & Intermedia Concert Series on April 4, 2005, along with James Worlton's premeire of The Etiquette of Ice, settings of three poems sung by soprano Heidi Klein and conducted by Joseph Klein. Anthony Cornicello's ...turns and turns into the night, a setting of four poems from Sensual Math, premiered in the Works and Process Series at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, February 2001. The performance was by the Group for Contemporary Music, with guest soprano Lucy Shelton. Enid Sutherland's setting of Fulton's poem "Mail" for mezzo-soprano Deanna Relyea, backup singers, and the Phoenix Ensemble premiered in the Rackham Auditorium at the University of Michigan in October 2000. The World Premiere of Sutherland's complete setting of "Give: A Sequence Reimagining Daphne & Apollo" took place on October 24, 2003, at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan. William Bolcom included her work in his song cycle I Will Breathe A Mountain: A Cycle from American Women Poets. Its debut performance was by Marilyn Horne at Carnegie Hall's Centennial Celebration. Turbulence: A Romance, a song cycle with music by William Bolcom and words by Alice Fulton, was performed by Marsha Hunter and Brian Kent at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1997.

Alice Fulton was the 2004 Holloway Poet at University of California, Berkeley. She has been a Visiting Professor at University of California, Los Angeles; Ohio State University, Columbus; and the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She was a member of the American Delegation at the 1988 Chinese/American Writers' Conference, held in Beijing, Xian, Leshan, Wuhan, and Shanghai, Peoples Republic of China. She has been honored with the university-wide Henry Russel Award for promise of distinction in writing and excellence in teaching from The University of Michigan, and with an honorary Doctor of Letters from the State University of New York.

She is currently the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English at Cornell University.

Copyright © 2008 Alice Fulton. All Rights Reserved. Site design and administration, author photos, and details of paintings by Hank De Leo.