Elizabeth Willis's most recent book is Alive: New and Selected Poems (New York Review Books, 2015). Her other books of poetry include Address (Wesleyan University Press, 2011), recipient of the PEN New England / L. L. Winship Prize for Poetry; Meteoric Flowers (Wesleyan University Press, 2006); Turneresque (Burning Deck, 2003); The Human Abstract (Penguin, 1995); and Second Law (Avenue B, 1993). She also writes about contemporary poetry and has edited a volume of essays entitled Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place (University of Iowa Press, 2008). A recent Guggenheim fellow, she has held residencies at Brown University, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and the Centre International de Poésie, Marseille, and has been a visiting poet at University of Denver, Naropa University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. From 1998-2002 she was Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Mills College. Since 2002 she has taught at Wesleyan University, where she is Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing.
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First poems you read or loved:
The first book of poetry I owned—when I was about five—was Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. I carried it everywhere even before I could read it.
Favorite poems or book of poems:
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.
Emily Dickinson’s poems, letters, and fragments.
Robert Duncan, “Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow.”
Lorine Niedecker, “When Ecstasy Is Inconvenient.”
George Oppen, Of Being Numerous.
John Ashbery, Flowchart.
Barbara Guest, Fair Realism.
Jack Spicer, Heads of the Town Up to the Aether.
Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency.
Susan Howe, Nonconformist’s Memorial.
Michael Palmer, Sun.
Lisa Jarnot, Ring of Fire.
What was the last book of poems you read:
Miguel Hernandez, translated by Don Share.
Your favorite motto / quote:
“Our values change according to our language.” -
-William Carlos Williams
Your favorite occupation / hobby:
Those are two completely different things! Do you mean work / job or what you occupy your time with?
Favorite occupations: writing, reading, sewing, teaching.
Favorite hobbies: dancing, going to the movies, visual compositions.
Your idea of happiness:
Having the same idea as someone else at the same time.
Your idea of misery:
Trying to explain myself to someone who is not interested.
Your favorite virtue:
Kindness.
What you appreciate the most in your friends:
Their ability to confirm or challenge my sense of reality.
Your favorite prose authors:
Herman Melville.
Michel Montaigne.
W. G. Sebald.
Emily Bronte.
Fernando Pessoa.
Charles Baudelaire.
Walt Whitman.
Cesar Aira.
Gertrude Stein.
Your favorite artist or musician:
J. M. W. Turner
The natural talent you would most like to have:
I wish I were a great singer.
What is your present state of mind:
Focused and curious
What can’t you tolerate:
Cruelty
What is your favorite food or drink:
Grapefruit juice
What is your least favorite word:
Wizened
What is your favorite word:
Ewe
--questions answered January 6, 2014
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