In Feeling as a Foreign Language, award-winning poet and critic Alice Fulton considers poetry's uncanny ability to access and recreate emotions so wayward they go unnamed. How does poetry create feeling? What are fractal poetics?In a series of provocative, beautifully written essays concerning "the good strangeness of poetry," Fulton contemplates the intricacies of a rare genetic syndrome, the aesthetics of complexity theory, and the need for "cultural incorrectness." She also meditates on electronic, biological, and linguistic screens; falls in love with an outrageous 17th-century poet; argues for a Dickinsonian tradition in American letters; and calls for a courageous poetics of "inconvenient knowledge."ContentsPreambleI. ProcessHead Notes, Heart Notes, Base NotesScreens: An Alchemical ScrapbookII. PoeticsSubversive PleasuresOf Formal, Free, and Fractal Verse: Singing the Body EclecticFractal Amplifications: Writing in Three DimensionsIII. PowersThe Only Kangaroo among the BeautyUnordinary Passions: Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of NewcastleHer Moment of Brocade: The Reconstruction of Emily DickinsonIV. PraxisSeed InkTo Organize a WaterfallV. PenchantsA Canon for InfidelsThree Poets in Pursuit of AmericaThe State of the ArtMain Thingsri0VI. PremisesThe Tongue as a MuscleA Poetry of Inconvenient Knowledge