Book description
Address draws us into visible and invisible architectures, into acts of
intimate and public address. These poems are concentrated, polyvocal,
and sharply attentive to acts of representation; they take personally
their politics and in the process reveal something about the way civic
structures inhabit the imagination. Poisonous plants, witches, anthems,
bees--beneath their surface, we glimpse the fragility of our founding,
republican aspirations and witness a disintegrating landscape artfully
transformed. If a poem can serve as a kind of astrolabe, measuring
distances both cosmic and immediate, temporal and physical, it does so
by imaginative, nonlinear means. Here, past and present engage in acts
of mutual interrogation and critique, and within this dynamic Willis's
poetry is at once complexly authoritative and searching: "so begins
our legislation." "Humorous, political, engaged, and deeply
resonant--at the end you'll start again."--Jeffrey Cyphers Wright,
Brooklyn Rail 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.
