poetic sensibility at once remarkably comprehensive and remarkably precise, and felt; her best book so far is possessed of great velocity, great staying-power." Felt was also selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 2001. As with her poetry collections, Fulton's first fiction collection is carefully constructed from interwoven parts "playing off and enhancing the meaning of one another." What sets The Nightingales of Troy apart from so many other precocious debut collections is Fulton's knack for the ineffable, for creating stories that are more than the sum of their intricately assembled parts. Her best stories not only exhibit her architectural prowess, they also remind the reader of the near-magical capaciousness of the story form. Donna Seaman notes that "Fulton displays extraordinary verve in the originality of the predicaments she creates for her irresistible characters, her evocation of the majesty of the land and the rise and decline of the town, and her ravishingly inventive language" and that she draws "brilliantly on the vernacular and ambience of each decade.""Fulton's prose thrives on the tactile, and, as in her poetry, the language is brilliantly precise. While often rooted in the physical, Fulton's narration frequently moves beyond the immediate, both powerfully and subtly." Poetics Fulton's "fingerprint-distinct voice" is immediately recognizable for its poetic ambition laced with humor and shifting poetic diction. While sharing an interest in scientific metaphors and diction with her mentor, A.R. Ammons, she differs from Ammons through her engagement with injustice and cruelty. In a statement accompanying her selection of Lisa F. Jackson's film, The Greatest Silence, for the 2008 "Revolution" writers conference and film festival at University of North Dakota, Fulton had this to say about her poetics: As a poet and writer, I'm committed to undermining postures of arrogance and entitlement, the context of "impunity" [depicted in The Greatest Silence]. Silence — especially enforced silence – has been one of my deep subjects, as has resistance, a quality as important to poetics as to revolutions. I've tried to engage with the background rather than the figure, to find new linguistic ways of confronting disenfranchisement, cruelty, and suffering, while retaining the uncanny qualities of poetry. I've tried to be a student of inconvenient knowledge — the sort of knowledge that, when taken to heart, forces us to change our lives in revolutionary ways. Sacred, religious, spiritual, compassionate, and ethical themes are incorporated in