Thirty-Odd Functions of Voice in the Poetry of Alice Notley

by Steven Zultanski

Alice Notley has consistently peopled her poetry with the voices of those around her: kids, friends, husbands, strangers, and the dead. In Thirty-Odd Functions of Voice in the Poetry of Alice Notley, poet and critic Steven Zultanski offers an array of interpretations of this technique, sketching relationships between intimate speech and literary language.

Genres: Poetry

45 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2020

Reviews

[Marije de Wit · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Notley seems to suggest that dreams provide a model for poetry. This doesn’t mean that poetry is individualistic and private, but rather that the obscure relation between the conscious and unconscious (a relation both non-heroic and heroic, both quotidian and magical) is truer to life than the explanations that we invent to bring the confusing mechanics of the world into coherence.’