ELIZABETH
WILLIS
WORKING NOTES
by Elizabeth Willis
I
can't say that I even intended to write these; that is, they're not propositional
in any way. But I became fascinated by the ways in which lines arranged
themselves around a focal point--generally grounded in sound and the underlying
affiliations between words rather than events--and that without trying
to shape them with any formal constraints, these poems emerged in roughly
the same form and with roughly the same kind of interdependency. I spend
a lot of time commuting so my line is often sporadic & sprung, filled
with minor subject matter except for the backdrop of transitoriness, which
seems to run through the sonnet as a form. And since I tend to write poems
by carving away at them for months at a time, I wanted a title that suggested
some kind of compression and some degree of lyric openness.
Eight Untitled Sonnets
To live in someone
else's music
(the musician
not the composer is free)
a divine contention
like the damp
carpet
of liquored
olivia trees
(something
my favorite you
would say)
finding in
a hollow day
a winter keeper
a paper woman
caught in the
torrent
not quite falling
Figs of lost thought
rainy differences
and non-glides
feverish in
girlways
the tenuous
escape of a patient
nodding, obstinate
jeweled or
pinked
a pilling station
(laughing,
molten)
behind a gay
exterior
or broad caplet
too
tough to swallow
Carrying an atmosphere
beaten out
like sound
a still life
of amnesty
on the little
lane
trees are safely
tucked
below the wires
a darkness
carried
out of childhood,
other kindnesses
"I looked"
and
fell to
Unable to hire oneself
for labor or
to know
the green,
braided thing
someone sees
inside
you
forgetting your grasp
or "words"
in a paper
understanding
a paper flap
of happy self
your dream
above your head
like
comic weather
The teacher's love
of someone's
children
a flash of
light
in white air
so loving love
we lack science
and in ourselves
touch up the
little teacher's picture
Thinking through
a desperate
wedge
of indivisible
ink
I fall in filaments
an uncontrolled
breeze
nutsy, bottled
forged &
forgot
crawling (not
climbing) down
netted,
I bet
As proud & difficult
as greek
a vigil (or
Virgil)
kept bright
waiting to
happen
your father
walking
toward your
mother
as you briefly
look away
then follow
like a nonsense syllable
Ma.
Pa.
Loving the human
bird --
the bright
converse
of yellow-flowered
grasses --
why aren't
we lying
in miles of
weedy clover?
The bright
boat, tumbling through it
the blue of
it -- Or,
taking the
kid out of the picture
(what you loved
to see)
a girl who
talks to birds -- Don't go
Let's delay
or -- like Shakespeare -- "fly"
all disappointment
in the green
and untidy
molecular air
(back to top)
BIO: Elizabeth Willis is the author of The Human Abstract (Penguin, 1995) and Second Law (Avenue B, 1993). She teaches creative writing and literature at Mills College in Oakland, California.
