Elizabeth Willis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elizabeth Willis
Born April 28, 1961
Bahrain
Occupation Poet, Professor, Literary Critic
Nationality United States
Education University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
University at Buffalo
Notable work(s) Meteoric Flowers; Turneresque; The Human Abstract

Elizabeth Willis (born April 28, 1961, Bahrain ) is an American poet and literary critic. She currently serves as the Shapiro-Silverberg professor of literature and creative writing at Wesleyan University. Willis has won several awards for her poetry including the National Poetry Series and the Guggenheim Fellowship. Susan Howe has called Elizabeth Willis "an exceptional poet, one of the most outstanding of her generation."[1]

Life

Willis grew up in the Midwestern United States and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.[2] She then earned a Ph.D. from the Poetics Program at University at Buffalo.

Willis has taught at several institutions including Brown University, Mills College and the University of Denver and has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Centre International de Poésie, Marseille.[3] Since 2002, she has taught at Wesleyan University where she currently serves as the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing.

Willis has been awarded fellowships from the California Arts Council and the Howard Foundation and has won the National Poetry Series, the PEN New England Award and the Boston Review Prize for Poetry.[4] In 2012, she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.[5] Willis lives in Middletown, Connecticut.

Work

As a poet, Willis employs the use of "hybrid genres," an attempt to "push the limits of representation." Turneresque, for instance, draws on elements as diverse as the Romantic sublime and film noir. In terms of style, Willis is most often recognized for her "intense lyricism."[6] Her poetry tends to center on the relationship between art and nature and has been noted for its musicality and precision.[7]

Her literary criticism is concerned with 19th century and 20th century poetry and the ways in which changing technology comes to influence the production of poetry. She also investigates the effects of public and private spaces in her prose.[8] Additionally, Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics and the relationship between contemporary poets and antecedent poets are also frequent concerns of her work.[9] Willis has dedicated a significant portion of her career to a study of the works of Lorine Niedecker.

Reception

Elizabeth Willis's poetry has been widely praised. Jacket Magazine reported that Meteoric Flowers "offers the reader a strange and at times almost overwhelmingly pleasurable world."[10] Poet Ron Silliman wrote that the collection "is filled with brief, well-balanced, brilliantly written prose poems."[11] Susan Howe wrote, "Elizabeth Willis is an exceptional poet, one of the most outstanding of her generation, and Meteoric Flowers is her most compelling collection to date." Rosmarie Waldrop said that the collection "is a remarkable investigation of our experience and language."[12]

In a review of Turneresque, the Denver Quarterly reported that Willis "succeeds...in reinvesting language with the uniqueness of origin: the breath gesture of each letter." Ann Lauterbach wrote that Willis "recovers the originating lyric impulse into a haunting contemporary song. This is poetry of amazing intelligence and grace."[13] Cole Swensen wrote, "What drives Willis’s incisive commentary into stunning poetry are her gorgeous lines...Despite a distinctly noir atmosphere and the unsettling quality that always attends the sublime, Turneresque comes off as affirmative, even jocularly courageous. It seems - to borrow one of its phrases - "to imply or intone whole possibility of human sun."[14]

Of Address, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright wrote that the collection was "humorous, political, engaged, and deeply resonant." Michael Palmer wrote that the book movingly engages "eternal issues." Alice Notley wrote that "Willis newly revives the list/litany form, and that works to the reader’s delight."[15]

Reviewing Second Law, Susan Howe wrote, "The poems in Second Law are terse, precise, ecstatic and luminous. White letters serve as lures and traces through gaps of ordered scientific discourse, the rapture of the poet's will remains captive and rejoicing. In these linked fragmentary linguistic structures Elizabeth Willis enters Bunyan's emblematic river another time; singing."[16]

Awards

Poetry and criticism

References

  1. ↑ http://www.upne.com/0819568139.html
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/willis/willis-pub.html
  4. ↑ http://www.elizabethwillis.net/ElizabethWillis/Bio.html
  5. ↑ http://www.gf.org/fellows/17328-elizabeth-willis
  6. ↑ http://pippoetry.blogspot.com/2010/06/elizabeth-willis.html
  7. ↑ http://bostonreview.net/BR32.6/poetrycontest.php
  8. ↑ http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/willis/willis-pub.html
  9. ↑ http://pippoetry.blogspot.com/2010/06/elizabeth-willis.html
  10. ↑ http://jacketmagazine.com/30/kane-willis.html
  11. ↑ http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Willis
  12. ↑ http://www.upne.com/0819568139.html
  13. ↑ http://www.burningdeck.com/catalog/willis.htm
  14. ↑ http://www.burningdeck.com/catalog/willis.htm
  15. ↑ http://www.upne.com/0819570987.html
  16. ↑ http://www.durationpress.com/avenueb/secondlaw.htm

External links

Authority control
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.