The new is not Hollywood and it is not America and it is not the
founding fathers or the avant-garde who, like Jessica Alba, are
made of "lite toxicity." There is a seductive and false new, a
California of “the naggy sunshine & / the mean & stupid fucks,”
but there is revolution, a “tender cocktail,” and also birth, which
in all of its muddiness offers that “the new animal is / born of the
new animal.” These poems are a delicate unanesthetized surgery
in no sterile, metallic arena. Treadwell does her work with steady
hands but in the unsteady open, extracting what value of the
future remains even in a world with the rich “in their prissy
communes,” even among the texting “platinum herd.”
—Anne Boyer
"Treadwell's fifth full-length collection comes on like the Ritalin-addicted
younger sister of Juliana Spahr's This connection of everyone with lungs."
—Sophie Mayer, Delirium's Library
"Elizabeth Treadwell's is a difficult but deeply rewarding poetry.
It has a precision and a tenderness all of its own."
—Nathan Thompson, Stride
"If you want a feminist invention that is at once comic
and confident, melodic and bizarre, affectionate and committed
to its principles—then Treadwell is the next poet for you."
—Stephen Burt, The Believer
"This is a feminine poetry, marvelous, tough, and unrelenting...
Treadwell subverts and exposes unconsciously internalized
stereotypes and voices, breaking language down, and then
releasing the reader to make her own understanding. The result
isn't narrative--and is not always even mood or atmosphere,
but a series of rising challenges that relax into moments
of clear beauty."—Maureen Thorson, Boog City
"Treadwell arrives at a musicality that is feminist and angular;
that is Gertrude Stein and Mina Loy; that is pointed and luminous;
that is, in short, Lilyfoil, not lily flower.”—Juliana Spahr
"Elizabeth Treadwell's writing, in which human (usually female)
figures appear amidst fantastically embroidered surfaces,
demonstrates
volubility, humor, and intelligence in spades.
[Chantry is] a radiant sourcebook."—Joyelle McSweeney, Rain Taxi
“In our culture now, poets like Elizabeth Treadwell keep the voice of real
pain, triumph, defeat, and imagination alive…Treadwell writes from inside
people, not about them or around them.”—Fabula
Eleanor Ramsey: the Queen of Cups (SFSU, 1997)
out of print
"Will delight fans of Eileen Myles and Burroughs." -- Factsheet 5
as contributor, The European-San Francisco Poetry Festival Book
2001 (City Lights, 2001)
as editor, Lucy House: An Anthology of Prose (Double Lucy Books,
2000)
as contributor, An Avec Sampler # 2 (Avec Books, 1998)
Magazines
Work has appeared in Aufgabe, Barrow Street, Chain, Delirious Hem, Generator, The Germ,
How2, jubilat, Kenning, LUNGFULL!, mem, Mirage, Primary Writing, Shearsman, Tinfish, Traffic, Tripwire, two
girls review,
The World, Womens Studies Quarterly, & elsewhere