The Human Abstract (National Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Elizabeth Willis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Unwilling to share her "secret form of symmetry," Willis fills this work with hermetic detritus. Flashes of imagination deflect from image to image through word sequences that attempt to evade mundane sequences of language. Like a hierophant out of H.D.'s later work, Willis teases the mind more than she stirs the heart. There's a city without a border, a river in flames, a black iris, the "eye of God," Forest A., "crypted messages," a rosy dime, people like Azrael, a peregrine Prince, Plydictes, Qeys, Xian, and a good deal of pacing up and down to "measure...an outline of significance," which results in lines like "Zero-gardening to the lees/hard-labor defunct/when I against you tether/milktooth surrogate carnivore/though lovers in truth/God never was my darling." Omission passes for revelation: the chore of the reader is to hike out of Forest A. Sensation is suspect in this land of the occult, which is exhilarating but abstruse. Only the most dedicated poetry enthusiast will volunteer to accompany Willis on her journey to inaccessible, rarified meaning.
Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140249354
• ISBN-13: 978-0140249354
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,262,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Liz Willis: still fantastic after all these years/, November 11, 2004

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Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Human Abstract (National Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Elizabeth Willis, The Human Abstract (Penguin, 1995)

Elizabeth Willis is a fantastic poet, one of those holding the banner of the avant-garde in America who actually deserves to be holding it. Perhaps there is no better indicator of this than that Willis' The Human Abstract is one of those rare beasts, an American book of poetry printed after World War II released by the mighty keeper of all that is literary, Penguin. Established fans will already know (and may already own) some of the things in this collection, many of which were published previously as chapbooks or broadsides; don't let that stop you from shelling out for this bad boy. All the rest of what's in here is just as good as what you have. And if you've never entered the wild, wonderful, often frightening world of Liz Willis, you're in for quite a ride.

The first thing to note about Willis' writing is that, like all great poets, she is at least as concerned (if not more so, at times) with how it sounds than whether it makes sense. Let me rush to add, since it's a different way of thinking for most people, that that is a good thing (often, about the best poems, it is the best thing; read Simic, Stroffolino, Hamburger's translations of Tzara, early Eshleman, etc. for numerous examples). The thing that first strikes you about the poems in here is how good they sound. Well, that and the way they lay on the page (which, at least in comparison to the original chapbook of "A/O," is even toned down a bit here), which is sure to draw the eye. Read the stuff here through, first, just for the magic of sound, the pleasure of the differing flow of breath on some passages. Then delve into the meaning. And you'll probably have to delve; it's obvious from the material here that Willis is savagely intelligent, and one of those people who is driven to write by the things she's uncovered with that intelligence; you won't be sitting with a concordance, as you would with Pound's Cantos, but you might want to keep a search engine handy. All of which is quite worth it, as Willis is truly one of the guiding lights in American poetry today. **** ½