Poetry. "So millions of us woke up on a cold rock in the middle of a lake of smoldering tar. A hard-core getting to know you kind of affair, not only to keep alert and moving, but also singing & dancing & writing. In Fuller's STARTLE RESPONSE, the complex contours, historical density, and transformative potentiality of lived culture, are not given free reign (as that's a coercion of the now-now / status quo) but put to the acid test of genuine democratic impulse: each and every momentary autonomy of the word gives (graceful) way to a more fulsome expression of the radical interdependencies that constitute us. Let's face it. Too many poetries sputter out exactly at that transition. Heather Fuller thrives there."—Rodrigo Toscano

"What is most striking about the poetry of right now is how poems are being used to question and indict, rather than to comfort, by an emerging generation of poets. STARTLE RESPONSE examines our complicities and insists that we look on at the horrors—the horrors of the patriot act, of the privileged self... This book is for those who want more from poetry than a quiet house and a calm world. Its tense, tight poems are a stunning critique of nicety and narcissism in poetry."—Juliana Spahr

Reviews and Other Links
Publishers Weekly
Joshua Clover @ The New York Times