Elizabeth Willis's new collection is a stunning collision of the pastoral tradition with the politics of the post-industrial age. These poems are allusive and tough. While they celebrate the pleasures of the natural world-mutability, desire, and the flowering of things-they are compounded by a critical awareness of contemporary culture. As we traverse their associative leaps, we discover a linguistic landscape that is part garden, part wilderness, where a poem can perform its own natural history. Divided into four cantos interrupted by lyrics and errata, Meteoric Flowers mirrors the form of Erasmus Darwin's 18th-century scientific pastorals. In attending to poetry's investigative potential, Willis shifts our attention from product to process, from commodity to exchange, from inherited convention to improvisational use.

About the Author
ELIZABETH WILLIS is the author of three previous volumes of poetry. She is an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University and lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Reviews
"In light of the variety of worlds provided to us in Meteoric Flowers, I think it's safe to say that Willis is an ambitious and - dare I say it? - inspired poet. And let's not forget how gorgeous so many of the lines are throughout the book." - Daniel Kane, Jacket "Guided by the spirit of 18th-century botanist and intellectual Erasmus Darwin (Charles's grandfather), the poems of Willis's fourth book attempt to reclaim a natural world that has been made hazy by postindustrial and popular culture." - Publishers Weekly"



Book Information
ISBN 9780819568496
Author Elizabeth Willis
Format Paperback
Page Count 94
Imprint Wesleyan University Press
Publisher Wesleyan University Press