Selected Poems

by Alice Notley, George Schneeman (Photographer)

Poetry. "Entertaining, moving, Notley's work engages ever-deepening areas of division and isolation while settling for nothing less than a restoration of wholeness"--Joseph Donahue.

Genres: Poetry

138 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

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

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another book that's been sitting on my shelf, unread for ages. After reading Donald Allen's book, the masochist in me thought it was time to see what the next generation of poets who followed Olson's projective verse ideas were up to.... Of course, that doesn't really do Notley justice. She does, I think, have her own ideas and material here. She seems committed to developing a feminist voice in the form, and we get a lot of dailiness, a lot of housewifery and stuff about living in a small apartment with a husband who she is sometimes professionally jealous of.... In other words, Notley might not be ennobling domestic life but she's not afraid to present and develop it in her poetry, and there's a lot o be said for that.

But there's also a lot of it here, which is where Olson comes in. There's a long-long poem, for example, where it seems like we go day-by-day through a December when one of her sons has a fever, and I guess the poetry here is what Notley does to make it interesting, how the presentation of this material elevates it. Only, well, maybe that's contrary to the dailiness of just including it? I found this poem, and many of the poems here, fitfully engaging-- sometimes Notley finds something interesting and goes to town on it, but a lot of the material is, well, prosaic. And while I understand that is part of the poetic project, it can also be tiring.

There are occasional shorter poems here, and some of them are interesting- Notley at her best does some really striking things with syntax, the way words in sequence can create connections just by proximity, in a way that eludes traditional grammar. She is bold in her choices of what to write about, and sometimes the subjects of her gossip are shared, like when she dreams about Sean Penn and Madonna.

She writes in more-or-less the same form, long stanzas occasionally set off from one another, long long lines, for most of the poems here, but at the end, with the poem "White Phosphorous," about American soldiers in Vietnam, she develops a new line that I don't know how to read, exactly, but I liked- it felt like a syllabic or maybe beat-driven line, instead of the breathier poetics of her earlier work? The other example of it in the book doesn't work as well for me, but it felt like she was trying something new that had potential for her. And then there's a last poem here, "Red Zinnias" that reads at times like that worst nightmare of writers has come true, when you're sure you just can't write anymore because you're doing what you always did, only it's not a poem, just an exertion on the page without any poetry happening.... In other words, the last poem here is bad, and the way it resembles her earlier work makes her whole project seem questionable.

[great hit · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best we have

[H]

“If you peel off another layer of air & another/ Your eyes still can’t possess these things/ Yet they’re so clear, but in so much space, which is air…& how can the surface of silence, the sky, be a color—blue?/ & how can all the secrets be in something that’s a color?” (28)

“I just love him for years every day” (29)

“There’s no love, except/ there’s a big,big shape like a feeling/ You can hold it up in your two hands, practically/ And present it to the sky” (29)

“Do you think we men want only to be babies & women want/ to be perfect old men?” (42)

“A recipe may produce breakfast, but/ I am not nourished by/ Your recipe for my world—“ (51)

“When you go outside it’s different. No one/ is smarter/ about another person than that person. Imperial Painting in India/ Between 1600 & 1660/ Is at Asia House in 73 paintings through April 19” (52)

“Do/ you take it/ Do you take it friendship with you when you die” (53)

“Everything’s funny-looking. You’re presumed to be aging. A/ lot of love/ Is there when you relax. When you die there are two that merge./ don’t be afraid of your own mind, there’s an ocean there you know/ how to swim in” (59)

“A little art can solve a lot of problems,/ Especially ones that have to do with strange desires. It is only/ when dreams lose their importance that the dirty business of / evil begins “ (59)

“If all of what is strange/ made me sad, I would be very” (105)

“I became perhaps too suddenly myself again in the meadow” (126)

“Lay his heart down for the moment, she said, her voice trembling, lay it in the grass & wipe your hands clean there too— I did , Then let’s sit for a minute enjoying this night before we change forever” (128)

“I am the worst The worst flower locked/The answer must be the leaking back out/ Of what we know/ Until it’s here” (135)

“The zinnias are gone I burst with crimson/ Stand up and do something human/ What is human Hardly anything Say something red” (137)

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Jeffers to Ginsberg to Karl Shapiro, the "long line" always just rubs me the wrong way. It's usually too chatty, and when someone's trying to pull off incantation (e.g. Ginsberg), it just becomes a major snoozefest. Alice Notley's long-line poems tend toward the chatty end of the spectrum -- often literally evoking a droning conversation -- and I don't dig them much. But her shorter poems blow me away. "The Goddess Who Created this Passing World", "Margaret and Dusty", and "Backyard" especially. And my jaw dropped when I came to the semi-autistic "White Phosphorus", which feels like overhearing countless bus-ride conversations at once, just a major beautiful work. ("The Song of Allette" tries the same thing again but feels more coherent and less like magic.)

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Selected Poems of Notley works really, really well. An excellent cross-section of the work.

[christine "laughing and lamps" lulu · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love love love this woman and turn to this if i need to be inspired or need to see good poetry.

[George]

in her writing i don't think she wants people to learn; just to be immersed in a way of receiving the world.

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Indeed a master of atrocious poetic form