“The antithesis of nature, but au contraire, what I mean is wild n free.” Get liberated by TRACTATUS, Elise Houcek’s neo-bimbo limbo through “the alluring trash/meanness of the feminine.” The atmospheric drama and high hilarity of Lara Glenum meets "Britney Spears's SOS. Or a signal to the wolves, the dogs, the moon, anything chrome.” Immersive as a mansion of mirrors, Houcek plays through classic poem-stuff—beauty, memory, romance, and youth—until we arrive at the “joke-bed” of being, the fun house where language goes on holiday, gets a makeover, and comes home as philosophy."
–Candice Wuehle
"Elise Houcek created a brilliant poetry page-turner in TRACTATUS. Allow your eyes to adjust to the breath placed between each letter and each unique insight between language and the lives that cannot help but speak it. TRACTATUS is a book we will be talking about with our friends for a very long time! Let’s get swept into its vortex, from escaping interrogators to patriarchy’s pronounlessness and a new meaning to chicken nuggets."
–CAConrad
"Elise Houcek’s TRACTATUS is a complete retaliation against material
abstraction. It’s unapologetic and loud, casting literary metal into
stones and lexical stones into copper or ice. These deviating
vignettes of Houcek: they melt. In August. They flash at us. In
September. Today, they disobediently languish on the page of our eyes
like a “slit of white duvet embroidered” on our “navy blue” reading
glasses. With Houcek’s work, everything could become impossible again."
–VI KHI NAO