Disobedience

by Alice Notley

Alice Notley has earned a reputation as one of the most challenging and engaging radical female poets at work today. Her last collection, Mysteries of Small Houses, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Structured as a long series of interconnected poems in which one of the main elements is an ongoing dialogue with a seedy detective, Disobedience sets out to explore the visible as well as the unconscious. These poems, composed during a fifteen-month period, also deal with being a woman in France, with turning fifty, and with being a poet, and thus seemingly despised or at least ignored.

Author Biography: Alice Notley was born in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1945 and grew up in Needles, California. After a period of peripatetic traveling, she married poet Ted Berrigan. She has published more than twenty books and has been an important force in the eclectic second generation of the so-called New York School of poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

Alice Notley was an American poet. Notley came to prominence as a member of the second generation of the New York School of poetry—although she always denied being involved with the New York School or any specific movement in general. Notley's early work laid both formal and theoretical groundwork for several generations of poets; she was considered a pioneering voice on topics like motherhood and domestic life.
Notley's experimentation with poetic form, seen in her books 165 Meeting House Lane, When I Was Alive, The Descent of Alette, and Culture of One, ranges from a blurred line between genres, to a quotation-mark-driven interpretation of the variable foot, to a full reinvention of the purpose and potential of strict rhythm and meter. She also experimented with channeling spirits of deceased loved ones, primarily men gone from her life like her father and her husband, poet Ted Berrigan, and used these conversations as topics and form in her poetry. Her poems have also been compared to those of Gertrude Stein as well as her contemporary Bernadette Mayer. Mayer and Notley both used their experience as mothers and wives in their work.
In addition to poetry, Notley wrote a book of criticism (Coming After, University of Michigan, 2005), a play ("Anne's White Glove"—performed at the Eye & Ear Theater in 1985), a biography (Tell Me Again, Am Here, 1982), and she edited three publications, Chicago, Scarlet, and Gare du Nord, the latter two co-edited with Douglas Oliver. Notley's collage art appeared in Rudy Burckhardt's film "Wayward Glimpses" and her illustrations have appeared on the cover of numerous books, including a few of her own. As is often written in her biographical notes, "She has never tried to be anything other than a poet," and with over forty books and chapbooks and several major awards, she was one of the most prolific and lauded American poets. She was a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

Reviews

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written over the period July 1995 through August 1996, Notley's long poem (very long poem in that the book is 284 pages)is a combination dream journal, commentary on current events (Parisian particularly), memoir, anti-patriarchal manifesto (especially poetry world patriarchy)and metaphysical journey (quest by the self for the self of the self). The quest by/for/of the self takes the Soul (not a theological soul but all that one can't place one's hands on) down into the caves of imagination in the company of the Will whose names are many (Harwood, Hardwood, Robert Mitch-ham, Dante Hardone, Hardmitch, Basehart, Hardtimes, Hardwill, Hardlife, etc.)I read Disobedience as one long poem, even though the book is divided into sections which are themselves comprised of poems with titles (very long titles for the most part). While reading, I skipped over the titles, which my reading brain failed to acknowledge. On the other hand, Notley's use of a truncated line to separate "stanzas" is a formal element that did make me pay attention, as it often signals a shift from dream to saga to news clip, etc. Notley writes in the first person: elsewhere she has said, "I’m disappointed that some contemporary women poets might want to give up “voice,” as if that were possible or good. Voicelessness wouldn’t make a point that anyone outside a coterie would get; veiling the speaker hedges issues and responsibility for what’s said and what’s lived, individually and communally." Bearing that in mind, Notley's "I" is a dialogic, unshirking, multiple-persona force. Disobedience is a book that is radically unhospitable ("I've taken some/ care that this poem not be a nice place." 279) yet not without humor ("Should the soul eat quite so many/ chocolates, oh why not?" 278). I find particularly salutary her, so-to-speak, spiritual/ religious stance: "I don't propose an equalitarian lovingkindness or compassion./ I propose, for women, always an instinctive wariness./I propose, further, meditation in separate closets, without/ instructions. That's/ the whole religion. It never has to be proposed again/ in order to exist. It has no organization and no beliefs." Yes.

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knocking off one star because these poems only makes sense to me if I read them out loud to myself so fast that it starts to feel like I'm on speed, but when I do that for long enough to enter a kind of poetry trance, this feeling of sublimity begins to well from deep inside me, growing and growing until all the words are trembling like luminous cosmic strings, casting their light and sound on all the precious and infinite relational detail of the world. God yeah I guess it's pretty good.

[Mathew Serback · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What do I use my personality for?"

That's the kind of question that will send you spiraling into a world of depression, and that's the kind of writing that is contained in this book. People always want to force art into a category. This isn't a collection of poems, nor is it one long poem. This is just a story about a woman struggling with her identity that uses intensely interesting language.

As a writer, this is work has influenced me more than other. I have a serialized novella published by Icarus Down Review that is an homage to Detective Mitch Ham.

If you want to challenge yourself as a person, pick this book up.

[michal k-c · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe my favourite of Notley’s books (though I haven’t revisited a few in a very long time). Precision of voice is incredible here considering how the whole thing kind of operates on a poetics of contradiction. A great (perfect?) book wherein the poet attempts to create a “real Real world” in the space of the poem, only for externalities to continue to intrude (memories of poets and friends, often those who have died long ago). With Notley gone now it’s hard to say who my favourite living poet is

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notley is just the motherfucking best. I'm with Maggie Nelson when she calls this a "poetics of pure grouchiness," and says Notley's work "defiantly asserts its place at the table while hoping to upend the table altogether."

[c meng]

it is a very disobedient book. it made me uncomfortable and implicated and guilty and I loved that. i

[Wendy Trevino · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Strike section: "I am absolutely not you...Fuck off Walt, all of you." hahahaha

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a defiant collection of poetry and some of my favourite of Notley’s work.

[Gus · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Below the flames might be crystal?
what the fuck good would that be”

[Marije de Wit · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Convincing red-haired her to stay
with someone - his son -
who has another wife too,
it's the father, who can convince
anyone of anything:

look at them convincing you still
philosophy, science, literature -
everyone's convictions come from them;
in consequence a harping feminism...
and this is my old hat. But it's only a few years old
their old hat is thousands."

This book is a hypnotic and imaginitive meditation on the current state of our world and what lead up to it. At the same time it is a brutally honest account of that world, and telling of the place the female poet has in it. I'd call this essential reading for anyone, but especially for female artists in any discipline.

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've begun to appreciate Notley both the more I read her and the older I get. I loved how trippy and disruptive "Disobedience" was, even though there were a few phrases and lines about women of colour and women in general, in calling them sluts or whores, that I think went a bit over the line of what Notley was trying to get it. Besides that, a very thoughtful and hypnotic collection that really makes one question what poetry is, and to consider the relationship between form and content. This is one of the few instances where I understand why the book received such a high honour - it is completely well-deserved.

[maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notley is a mystic as she dives into the deepest parts of her psyche through dreams. Attempts to find a way motivated by the left hand path. Best read in between cycles of waking up and falling asleep again.

[Claire g · Rating 2 out of 5]

i feel like i was supposed to like this but am disobeying.

[Sherri]

I don't read much poetry so can't really rate it. I dug it, though.

[t.a. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread this when Notley died and now realizing I never rated, I'll miss laughing and crying with her, my depressed and neurotic stand-in-aunt

[Janel D. Brubaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was first introduced to Alice Knotley in my second semester of graduate school. I read the book Grave of Light and it had a radical impact on how I viewed poetry. Wanting to read more long poems and especially poems that blend genres together, I decided my next book of hers to read would be this one, Disobedience.

I'm not sure I was able to fully appreciate the beauty of this book. I only gave it 3 stars, but I filled several pages with quotes that I loved and I remember being fascinated and captivated by it as I read. Although it is written in verse, the book is not just poetry. It is also memoir, fantasy, and autobiography, weaving together memories and other pieces of the narrator's life and experiences in a way that feels reminiscent of fairy tales. There's almost a cautionary tale quality to this book and it's long-form verse, and yet it feels as though the narrator is speaking to her past self as well as her audience.

The more poetry I read, the more I see just how prevalent themes of loss, pain, and grief are to poets. Disobedience resonates with a deep ache, something both spoken and unspoken that hinges the writing to the audience in a way that baffles, excites, and grieves. "I exit into hot empty," (pg 8); "Don't arrive anywhere in your sleep / Don't mix up night and day / soul and detective. No" (pg 11); "does an owl make / her life on reflection?" (pg 15); "in the exact world / to make ends meet draw an arrow / a position moving backwards in time / grasps yesterday quickly before dying" (pg 15). Throughout these lines is a truth that the writer cannot face, something the speaker knows and is wrestling with, ever so often giving us glimpses into the emotional landscape of these poems.

I think one of the reasons this book hit me in such a contradictory way is because Knotley writes poetry in a way I don't understand. The structure of her lines, her use of blank space, her choice of words and images is...I don't even know, almost hypnotic. I feel lulled into a kind of reflective anxiety where I'm invited into a narrative I don't understand, and in which I am now expected to play a part. The speaker guides and then disappears, their voice always present, but their form always coming into and out of view. I don't, to this day, really know what Disobedience is about and if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's a long poem on self-discovery in grief, but even that feels so superficial.

And yet, what a testament to this poet's amazing use of language to actually build such a reaction in a reader. I was confused by this book, but the poem itself is not confusing. I think it's one of those books where the more you read it, the more you understand what's not being said. "Don't mix up night and day / soul and detective." Humanity is examined in this book in a deep, philosophical, intensely honest way. The human soul is, likewise, examined and looked over and considered. I think Knotley is masterful in the way she weaves multiple tapestries together, and I think it will take multiple readings of this book for me to see the whole picture.

[James Debruicker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic long-form poem about Notley's experience in Paris from 1995-1996. Mediated at least partially through the voice of a hardboiled private investigator played by Robert Mitchum. It's either better than it sounds or exactly as good as it sounds depending on how much "long form poem" + "Robert Mitchum" tickles your pickle.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book goes with me everywhere.

[twrctdrv · Rating 5 out of 5]

1) Absolutely amazing collection of poems.

2) If I go any further with my review I'd be missing the point almost as much as the dudes quoted on the back cover of my edition.

[Kyle]

"Each poem quivers as I do and then flows forwards"

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Notley opens up the possibilities of how/where a poem can go. She's one of my heroes.