cover image Powers of Congress

Powers of Congress

Alice Fulton, Fulton. David R. Godine Publisher, $16.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-87923-866-7

Although Fulton ( Palladium ) possesses a keen sense of the pliability of language, her imagery is often incoherent or heavy-handed. The poem ``Romance in the Dark,'' for example, begins cryptically: ``The Other, a nebula: / dust that shines, umbrella / in the stars' rain. We study night's curricula / wondering, is it shelter?'' The poet has sacrificed the emotionality of her subject to the bravado of wordplay. The meandering ``Point of Purchase'' repetitiously enforces the idea of God as a control freak: ``Say we don't pray. God gets sorry / for Himself, starts erupting with this poor-mouth stuff / on how He's been betrayed.'' If Fulton's narrative poems are more successful at evoking moods and feelings, it is because her usually wayward images are sewn together with the thread of biographical chronology. ``A Union House,'' about her father's attachment to his old hotel, is poignant, and the clever ``Overload'' gives us a skillfully impressionistic depiction of an air invasion during World War II as seen through the eyes of a young paratrooper. (Nov.)