Dismiss. The Indie rock group AroarA put music to her fascinating piece, In the Pines (2007). Benjamin Voigt grew up on a small farm in upstate New York. In spring 2001, she received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award. American Studies Journal, AccueilNumros1ReconnaissancesInterview of Alice Notley. 106AN: Thats from In the Pines (2007). In 1999, Notley was both a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. Instead of second-guessing their style, we could talk about the way they handled the tasks. Orpheus is a stand-in for poetry. The text is visually striking with quotation marks surrounding each poetic foot, intended to slow the reader down and indicate the pace at which the book is to be read. You know Newman makes these large, abstract works. Eileen was twelve. Did it influence you? 12DR: Thats what Ted Berrigan was about: taking things from here and there, picking them up, and making them his own. One group of studentsDarlene Pearlstein, Peter Kostakis, and Richard Friedmanstarted a small poetry press, The Yellow Press, which would go on to publish two books by Notley, one book by Berrigan, and give out a yearly Ted Berrigan Prizeoverseen in part by Notleyfor a first book (though the press would cease publishing two years in). At the moment, it feels like theres not much going on there; because its all going on at the surface actually. Notleys work is famously heterogeneous, but its possible to see a gradual shift in her work, beginning in the mid-eighties, away from the New York Schools emphasis on ordinary detail and the surfaces of daily city life. Notley was born on November 8, 1945 in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. Im working on arcane things at the moment which I find hard to talk about. NOTLEY, Alice. French poetry was aimless, became philosophical, though now there are some younger poets that are starting to put the concrete back in, but slowly; I discussed it with French poets a few years ago, who confirmed for me that French poetry became abstract out of trauma from World War II, the occupation, and everything, authors being too traumatized to speak concretely. I grew up with the Mojaves, going to school with them. 91DR: You quote the powerful, assertive voice of Marianne Moore in a poem. Alice Notley was born on November 8, 1945, in Bisbee, Arizona, and grew up in Needles, California. NOTLEY, Alice. I would like some help. Whereupon, she just totally melted. Among her two newest volumes are Eurynomes Sandals (Presses Universitaires de Rouen, 2019) and For the Ride (Penguin Books, 2020). I had met him in 1969, then we stayed friends. DR: To pursue with craft questions: in the. He taught some writing: one writing class, and one civilization and literature class. Do you remember when he wrote the second The Circus? My mother had broken her hip. They would go out in the Hopi pueblo and get whatever snakes there were around, and a quarter would be rattlers, but in Prescott, they only used bull snakes. Lipstick, Queens, 1947 these were things he just wrote down on this list of possible titles. My current process is to write in the morning. I was influenced by Koch, particularly by the period starting with the second The Circus (1971). That gives you a sense of the sound. Was she of an Irish sort? deserve to be there, having their names engraved in that particular way. 28DR: I think he interrupts the thought, but the thought he interrupts keeps going. Notley claims it was boring and returned to Iowa City where she met the poet Ted Berrigan who began as an instructor at the school that fall. His poems are totally him; his voice is unique; his sensibility is unique; and he was always basing it on something else; he wanted to be like Frank [OHara] intensely, but there was no way he could be like Frank. It seemed that people like Joe Brainard were doing important, high-art collages and we could follow along without any pretention to be creating masterpieces. Her children, Anselm Berrigan and Edmond Berrigan are both New York Poets of a younger generation. River beneath appearances. I used to substitute teach for him, sometimes, at Brooklyn College. Also in my poem Disobedience (2001), I got the title in a dream about him. How, in your view, did humanity get itself in such a predicament? Her mother was Polish and her father Irish. DR: I wouldnt be able to take the journey if I couldnt hear the poem.. In the middle section, which is in prose, there are three people: me, Medea, and Dido, my gripe being that she founded a city, Carthage. She was 88had just got back upand I was so inspired by how she got back up that I wrote that poem; I also wrote Blinding the White Horse in Front of Me (2016) basically in the same spurt of energy. DR: Your attitude towards staleness in the academic world, your sensitivity towards these questions of history and politics, indeed your measure and courage for speaking out reminds me of one first-generation New York School poet in particular, Kenneth Koch. Like somebody live in some city. Im closely influenced by them, and working with Apollinaire at the moment. , Wesleyan University Press, 2006 (p.292-293), reproduced with permission of the author. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979, p. 911-1772. New York: Penguin Poets, 2016. I was influenced by Koch, particularly by the period starting with the second The Circus (1971). It emasculates her. The Descent of Alette. Its small and a bit fragile. These places are continuously operating as presences in your poetry, particularly the Needles of your youth, in California, the Lower Manhattan in the heyday of New York School Poetry, and the Paris of today. 70DR: Was the teaching of poetry workshops something that connected you to Kenneth Koch? Alice Notley on her life with Ted Berrigan. NOTLEY, Alice. Produced by Curtis Fox. But her writing exerts intense attraction. 112AN: Ah, thats from Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (2011), from the lady with antlers; that was strange: I fell asleep, dreamed of being a woman with antlers, then when I woke up I opened Le Monde, lo and behold, there was a picture of a model with antlers on her head and she was in a fashion show that day on the runwayshe was wearing antlers: it was a premonitory dream. In the case of John Ashbery, theres a poem called Syringa (1977) with an Orphean motif. The magazine ran for eight issues, three of which were published while Notley and Berrigan lived in England. Other beings begin to materialize, and it seems that they are all survivors of a global disaster. Its rare when a book summary isnt entirely sure whats going on inside, and such enigmas are either an irritant or central to Notleys mystique, depending on your taste. In the case of John Ashbery, theres a poem called Syringa (1977) with an Orphean motif. So I grew up as friends with Native Americans, and imbued with certain things; I was also attuned to what had happened, without knowing fully, because there was a kind of sadness among the Mojaves in my town, along with immense curiosity and interest among some Anglos. I use the collages to go on without thinking with words. . She describes it as an immense act of rebellion against dominant social forces, against the fragmented forms of modern poetry, against the way a poem was supposed to look according to both past and contemporary practice. The narrator, Alette, finds herself in a feminist epic, on a subway, traveling deeper and deeper in the tunnels, into an underworld filled with caves and otherworldly characters. Life spilled out onto the street, colors whirled. New York: Knopf, 1998. The Indie rock group, (2005), collects a series of sensitive essays she wrote about her own poetry and that of others from her poetic. Songs for the Unborn Second Baby. [3] Notley and Berrigan spent the several months between Long Island and Chicago in Bolinas, California, which is where Berrigan officially printed 165 Meeting House Lane. Can we talk a little bit about the pop culture that figures in your work? Her work is various, spontaneous, and increasingly mythological. Said Let there be lightbulbs & liquefaction. In reframing and re-empowing Dido and Medea, she is writing a meditation on destruction. 44AN: That photo in the middle is me at age ten, I think. AN: Yes, and she hasnt changed much. Recent books continue to be at least somewhat character centered. We were all born in 1945, and despite a certain competitiveness at first, became good friends. The incentives to engage in selfish, destructive action are as strong as they always have been. DR: Such natural presences are important. hard and deeply about each part as I go along. This evolution in her work was also spurred by a series of personal losses, including of her husband (the poet Ted Berrigan), her step-daughter, and her brother. Theyre beautiful. Her first husband, Ted Berrigan, was an equally charismatic figure among an influential group of downtown poets. New Addresses was influenced by my autobiographical book that almost won the Pulitzer Prize, Mystery of Small Houses (1998), getting him to dredge up his past, bravely. 49DR: In that book, the heroine is a true medium who can look at someones face and know things, and at the end she is taken off to the asylum; Andr Breton then rails for two pages about how misguided asylums are, which makes your collage seem to be broaching the question of clairvoyance in terms of surrealistic, poetic culture. On Facebook, Written after the death of her brother, a Vietnam veteran who suffered from PTSD, Notleys searing elegy challenges the Western poetic tradition by drawing attention to its complicity in war making and empire building. 6David Reckford: Among the physical, cultural, and intellectual environments that have formed your particular sensitivity, there seems to be several strong and contrasting places. In the spring of 1976, Notley and her family returned to New York, and her husband Ted fell ill with hepatitis, a disease he suffered from until his death in 1983. . The books were published under the imprint Unimproved Editions and Notley made cover art for the majority of the titles. NOTLEY, Alice. Although Notley is less known to a casual poetry readershipher inventiveness and audacity are matched by her difficulty she is one of the singular voices in contemporary American poetry. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. My book, (1992) features Robert Desnos and uses patterns from the. She was educated in the Needles public schools, Barnard College, and The Writer's Workshop, University of Iowa. Berrigan's death in 1983 struck the poetry community exceptionally hard and over the next decade, Notley would suffer the loss of many others who were close to her. There were various famous people now that were in it like Susie Timmons. Logic AN: His werent poetry workshops: he taught undergraduate courses at Columbia. Those are the ones Im working on right now, which have to do with my poetry of the moment. Poetry itself can be thought of as that which comes from afar. Notley has said that her decision to place the refrain at the beginning of the stanza rather than the end is what allowed her to continue writing the poem. Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems. 89DR: Right, thats a strong, colonizing streak in Western culture. She has long written in narrative and epic and genre-bending modes to discover new ways to explore the nature of the self and the social and cultural importance of disobedience. 117DR: Its a beautiful indictment of bureaucracies and their inhuman treatment. He gave everybody permission to be funny. Theyre beautiful. But Notley, never one to be pinned down, has continued to push poetrys formal constraints, and this pursuit has led her far away from portraits of domestic life. You and Ted published it in your review, AN: I started to be quite influenced by him at that point, and I think I influenced him in the writing of the book. . In the middle section, which is in prose, there are three people: me, Medea, and Dido, my gripe being that she founded a city, Carthage. The Crying Book Reveals How Tears Can Help Us, and How They Cant. The Descent of Alette is a 1992 book length poem by the American poet Alice Notley. 34AN: I met him once, Barnett Newman, right before he died. 83DR: Yes, right, on one level, shall we say? . I would write during that high, meanwhile I would listen to Bob Dylan tapes. 60AN: I do not expect to be well known in the universities because that context tends to be too academic, and generally French poetry is in a bad place. Notley. DR: It seems to be an inspired collage. In her earlier work, Notley often incorporated the speech of people around her, particularly her children (as in her masterpiece January). Entitled The Speak Angel Series, her latest collection of new material is forthcoming from . 99AN: Frank caught how great Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems (1962) was. There's an unfinishedness. At the same moment, at Saint Marks, Bernadette Mayer, Anne Waldman, and I taught poetry workshops. There are others over there. In 1972, Notley married Berrigan and the two moved to Chicago where Berrigan had been given Ed Dorn's newly vacated teaching position at Northeastern Illinois University. 113DR: Yes, that brings me back to what I was saying earlier about Andr Bretons Nadja who sees things before they happen next and is just carted off: the status of mediums becomes a metaphor for the status of poetry in society. Photographer unknown, Alice Notleys father doing the Hopi snake dance, c. 1945, courtesy of the Alice Notley, re-photographed by Daesong Kim. DR: The conversation has veered far from Needles, which I hope we will return to, as we evoke various social spaces that seep into the poems. 66AN: I started to be quite influenced by him at that point, and I think I influenced him in the writing of the book New Addresses: Poems, published in 2000. I grew up with the Mojaves, going to school with them. 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