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." Her poetry tends to center on the relationship between art and nature and has been noted for its musicality and precision.
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. Additionally, Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics and the relationship between contemporary poets and antecedent poets are also frequent concerns of her work. Willis has dedicated a significant portion of her career to a study of the works of Lorine Niedecker.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Willis
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world. But it is found that the machine unmans the user. What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Dear Felix, I have found some work for you. First of all we must have an eye-to-eye monologue and get things settled.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)