Address (Wesleyan Poetry) by Elizabeth Willis

A review by Abigail Licad

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare has Theseus describe poetic undertaking as that which "gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name." It is therefore fitting that Elizabeth Willis titles her fifth collection, a study of poetry's role in society, Address. The book's poems mine the multiplicity of meanings and associations behind its single-word title, and while doing so they contemplate the ineluctable link between poetry and politics, art and civic awareness, and the necessity for collaborative examination of political matters that affect us.

Willis' associative leaps and juxtapositions astonish and probe, often testing its reader of his or her own demand of history, art, and current events -- one may, as this reader did, bow her head in shame after recognizing only a small number of "witches" in the poem "Blacklist," which refers to literary and political personalities from Ronald Reagan to Sappho and Maria Tallchief. The book will present a challenge for most...

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