Address
ISBN: 9780819570994
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Wesleyan University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: American poetry.;

Anne Hutchinson, Sen, Katherine Harris, and a catalogue of the poisonous plants of America all find their way into this fifth book from Willis (Meteoric Flowers). Willis's fascination with forms originating outside of poetry-"F.A.Q," "Flow Chart," "Blacklist"-makes for a collection of great variety, with poems of various shapes, sizes and lengths. Some of the poems lose momentum in wordplay, but elsewhere Willis is her sharpest, funniest, and most original when she calls up a subject almost as old as poetry itself: witches. "The Witch" and "Blacklist" find Willis freeing herself to single, aphoristic lines that manage to comment on the heritage of woman-as-witch ("If her husband dies unexpectedly, she may refuse to marry his brother") while sending up our modern landscape as well ("In Hollywood the sky is made of tin"). Willis's address is unmistakable: these are poems that "tell you what you've done." (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

ELIZABETH WILLIS is the author of four previous books including Meteoric Flowers, Turneresque, and The Human Abstract. She is Shapiro-Silverberg Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University.


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