The Art of Poetry No. . Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems and The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954): that book is fantastic; he caught the new line, which he refers to in one of his letters. November 2014. At the moment, it feels like theres not much going on there; because its all going on at the surface actually. NOTLEY, Alice. New York: Unimproved Editions, 1986. Those are the ones Im working on right now, which have to do with my poetry of the moment. 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. 30DR: In your work, theres something in the interstices between thoughts thats both intriguing and active. Notley and Berrigan were frequent instructors at Naropa University's summer writing program. You know that quotation from a Paris Review interview (1983) that everything is this underground river and you can just draw from it any time you want to. Life spilled out onto the street, colors whirled. Then generations of people had to have to deal with the bad behavior and figure out how to talk about it. He would fly to Paris, find me, and we would have dinner; also, he had a group of Paris friends. Lipstick, Queens, 1947 these were things he just wrote down on this list of possible titles. Notley citesin parta reading by Robert Creeley as early inspiration for her writing more poetry. She lives and works in Paris. 70DR: Was the teaching of poetry workshops something that connected you to Kenneth Koch? AN: I use all those units and I am aware of how they overlap. hard and deeply about each part as I go along. That is just the beginning. The first time I went there I was completely humiliated by the people working there. The Descent of Alette. Notleys work stands as a testament to how difficult it is to be truly individual. 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. Im closely influenced by them, and working with Apollinaire at the moment. My book Dsamre (1992) features Robert Desnos and uses patterns from the Lais of Marie de France. And theres a poem called This Kind of Paradise (1986) where the Hopis suddenly appear in a bureaucratic Food Stamps Office. You can read her biography, an interview with Notley, and more of her poems in the Poetry Foundation archive. They are a grappling with it as a kind of a design problem. Its from Homer. Indeed, French poetry has had some weird times, where it got so abstract. DR: What do you think of Gertrude Stein and of the kind of permutations she does: almost like rolling things around in your mouth? At Berrigan's behest, his students at Northeastern became very active members of the local poetry scene, starting magazines and reading series. McKinley. DR: To go on with my list: We are secretly holding the ghost dance, take care of the pines where we sleep, I have the Antlers she., (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. I just sat in here and wrote about Allen and the international aspect of his work. [2], After Notley's graduation, she and Berrigan spent periods of time in New York City and Buffalo. Which gives you bits of advice and instructions. MYLES, Eileen. Mayer and Notley both used their experience as mothers and wives in their work. Alice Notley on her life with Ted Berrigan. was influenced by my autobiographical book that almost won the Pulitzer Prize. NOTLEY, Alice. 59DR: With your interpolation of popular culture into epic poetry, I would expect you to be a household name here in France. In For the Ride (Penguin 2020), Notley presents words as precarious cargo being salvaged from a global catastrophe and disintegrating reality. 107DR: Lets see, arrive the exactitude of pitch the tune in words alone; thats In the Pines too. To Annapurna or Mt. Notleys latest collection, For the Ride, a sprawling book-length poem, continues her trajectory into the unknown: anything happens here / in the magic of ones chaos. With its mess of divergent voices, picture-poems, and eccentric locutions, the result is baffling, beautiful, and always fascinatingly Notley. But her writing exerts intense attraction. But I met himI met everybodyaround 1968. I could have a conversation about Royal Trux: a very chaotic indie group, sometimes awful, sometimes amazingly brilliant. Alice Notleys poetry has evolved through many phases and experiments, as her output continues to be strong, and is increasingly studied academically. Notley gave birth to her and Berrigan's second child, Edmund Berrigan, at Colchester Hospital in 1974. Particularly the middle one. 4Since then, her poetry has continued to flow and evolve. Eileen was twelve. And they participated, when they lived in Prescott, AZ, in an organization which did Native American Dances every year, called The Smoki, which my father was in, and which had been instituted by the businessmen in Prescott in the 1930s. There werent a lot of cacti where I lived, but there were a lot of bushes. They were the CDs that my son made and sent me; there are a lot of miss-hearings of Bob Dylan songs, as well as just a lot of folk songs that I already knew, in that work. She made one change when she worked for James Schuyler, and she adopted a version of his short line, though after that theres little change, except a few years ago, when she started putting in spaces between thoughts: in a new way she created some disjunction she had never had before. and Laurence B. HOLLAND. The Crying Book Reveals How Tears Can Help Us, and How They Cant. Ruth Lilly Prize winner Alice Notley on the voice and spirits of her poetry. One day she took a lot of pills in a quasi-suicide attempt, when I was there, and then she just had to be rescued from this life of working a lot, not having enough, and too little company. About two-thirds of the way through the book theres a dream that has to do with a poet that has written a poem called disobedience: the poet was Kenneth in the dream, but, such is dream logic, it was really me. Nadja, in uvres compltes, tome 1. . And that other one was something I just picked up from the sidewalk. Bernadette Mayer writes through the pandemic. Can we talk a little bit about the pop culture that figures in your work? 37DR: Historically, painting is central to cultural New York and to New York poetry. 118AN: It was definitely weird to get food stamps. 27AN: I dont think thats true of her poetry though, and I dont think thats what John did exactly. 214, fall 2015, p.34-121. The poem has been seen as offering a feminist critique of the genre of epic poetry. All rights reserved. Parts of a Wedding. I grew up with the Mojaves, going to school with them. Join now Sign in . AN: I wouldnt be able to take the journey if I couldnt hear the poem thats all based on folk songs and not those lines, but I was writing In the Pines while I was doing the Hepatitis C treatment, where the drugs would depress you, but once a week you would have to take a shot which, they didnt tell you, would get you high for a half hour before you got sick. 106AN: Thats from In the Pines (2007). 89DR: Right, thats a strong, colonizing streak in Western culture. In this emblematic early piece, the text spills across the page. NOTLEY, Alice. 17AN: Yes, they were the two Irish of the set. That was one of the first things Ted [Berrigan] told me about John: he kept a list of titles, like Civilization and Its Discontents, then he would decide, Ah, that would be a great title for a poem, and then later he would check his list and pull that title out. I certainly wouldve used anything to keep from being sent. That piece is from a postcard of a painting of Notre-Dame and evil spirits flying out of it. The character One is a kind of joke (Notley has always had an oddball sense of humor), but a joke that underscores the flimsiness of a stable idea of the self. I think all poets do that; its also something out of the tradition of folk music. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She has lived most extensively in Needles, in New York, and since 1992 in Paris, France. DR: Historically, painting is central to cultural New York and to New York poetry. She wound up in a nursing home, the life and soul of the nursing home: a great Irish lady. 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. DR: Now I heard you say that the cadences for, AN: I actually listened to Monteverdi to get the cadences that were before, : particularly in White Phosphorus (1988) and at the end of Beginning with a Stain, . There were various famous people now that were in it like Susie Timmons. NOTLEY, Alice. Notley was born on November 8, 1945 in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. Notley came to prominence as a member of the second generation of the New York School of poetryalthough she has always denied being involved with the New York School or any specific movement in general. He could write any time he wanted to; Im like that too. I mean sometimes theres a lot of garbage but not usable garbage and so it takes me a long time to get anything made. The Indians said: No, we wont do it, but we will send people to teach them to you. The tribes then would send the people to Prescott, and every year they would teach these businessmen dances. AN: Yes, towards the end of number fourteen, the last one. These poems are included in Notley's collection Early Works, edited by Nick Sturm and forthcoming from Fonograf Editions in March 2023.. Alice Notley is the author of over 40 books of poetry, including, most recently, Certain Magical Acts (2016), Eurynome's Sandals (2019), and For the Ride (2020). They wanted people to come and put the dances on, trying to help preserve them actually (there were about fifteen or twenty Indian Tribes in Arizona). Orpheus is a stand-in for poetry. 57, no. Like somebody live in some city. 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. My favorite is how to cure an octopus: you go fishing, get an octopus, and you beat it against a rock. She delves into a range of topics in a single poem, such as "The Prophet", she converses about toilets, different countries, and the idea of marriage, and somehow she's able to bring all of these farfetched ideas together. 72As for my teaching at the Saint Marks poetry project, I gave assignments from week to week and I made the students bring in those rather than the poems they wrote on their own, to hold discussion without my having to criticize them too much. The whole point of the Aeneid is to take away from her the founding of a city, and transform her into this love suicide, and to rob her of her power. NOTLEY, Alice. Philip Gourevitch. 99: Eileen Myles.. The incentives to engage in selfish, destructive action are as strong as they always have been. I would like some help. Whereupon, she just totally melted. Then I found all the spots around the world in them and talked about them as being set in the world as a whole, saying that was a fitting poetry for now, when were all crossing borders all the time: spanning geography is the main event today, because there are so many people. I grew up among Native Americans. I had it for a long time and it started to break. and Laurence B. HOLLAND. How, in your view, did humanity get itself in such a predicament? 96DR: Well I think of Williams as a kind of Calder mobile waiting to enter into movement. 8DR: Such natural presences are important. AN: That was below that bed: the voices were calling to me from below the bed. 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. Ill read a part of it: Alice Notley, Where Leftover Misery Goes inGrave of Light, Wesleyan University Press, 2006 (p.292-293), reproduced with permission of the author. By Alice Notley. Death, grief, and spirituality were terrain that the fast talk of New York School poetics hadnt fully engaged; so, too, was the political and feminist consciousness growing in Notleys work. Grave of Light. [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. I had met him in 1969, then we stayed friends. Notley and Berrigan joined an already active community of Chicago poets, including Paul Carroll, Paul Hoover, and Maxine Chernoff. AN: No, never: when I address enemies, I am not carrying them on my shoulder; Im being intensely annoyed by them. 85DR: Also referring to the Aeneid, you speak about Dido in Songs And Stories Of The Ghouls (2011): she is a female character who suffers a kind of erasure, despite being the great queen of Carthage. She edited and wrote the introduction for the reissue of Ted Berrigans The Sonnets (2000), as well as editing, with her sons, The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (2005). I mean sometimes theres a lot of garbage but not usable garbage and so it takes me a long time to get anything made. Descent would grow to be Notley's most widely read and taught collection after its reprinting by Penguin in 1996. , c. 1945, courtesy of the Alice Notley, re-photographed by Daesong Kim. Tracing the fight for equality and womens rights through poetry. Everyone who went there was either black or Hispanic. 25AN: Yes, and she hasnt changed much. Everyone who went there was either black or Hispanic. 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. I went downstairs. When I was a young poet, I couldnt figure out what to title anything, and I discussed this with Ted, who said: You should write to Ron Padgett and get a list of titles, which I did; he just made up all these titles for me. DR: I wouldnt be able to take the journey if I couldnt hear the poem.. Anne Waldman says that one thing she learned at that point was that the Hindus say carry your enemy on your shoulder. Thats a counter-intuitive idea. because theres something resembling skulls going on here with the top of the fan supports. But every time he quoted somebody he misquoted him or her without even knowing it, so he always made the texture his own. It emasculates her. I have some Cherokee Blood, perhaps one-sixteenth Cherokee. 115DR: Also Im coming back often to that poem, In this Paradise, about the food-stamp office. New York: Scribner Poetry, 2001, p.120-124. I went down there is simple, but it is rich. On Ted Berrigans exuberant and idiosyncratic prose. 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. So, there were people from all different professions at the table, a few Americans and some artistic peoplebut not that many. 22DR: Like Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman reading at Saint Marks church their collaborative poem, Memorial Day (May 6, 1971), that episode of Public Access Television, June 16, 1977, where you and Eileen Myles read together must count among the great New York School moments still on record. In addition to collections of poetry, Notley has published the autobiography Tell Me Again (1982), the play Annes White Glove (1985), and a book of essays on poets and poetry, Coming After (2005). I actually feel bad when I dont write, like yesterday, but I always have something going on. Im closely influenced by them, and working with Apollinaire at the moment. She has lived most extensively in Needles, in New York, and since 1992 in Paris, France. Andrew Whiteman and Ariel Engle, whove done something mesmerizing; also, my son Eddie is both a poet and an indie musician: I know about some indie people from about 2000, not so much after that. I grew up with the Mojaves, going to school with them. As Notley writes in "The Prophet" (1981): "One is you & all this & two & yet." The yet is where poetry begins. Courtesy of the artist, re-photographed by Daesong Kim, April 2018. My parents were from Arizona. I didnt know any French; I had no French when I came here, basically, in my late forties. Notley has remained in Paris but makes several trips to the United States each year to give readings and teach small workshops. 57, no. contact email: nicksturm00@gmail.com The range, audacity, and radical commitments of Alice Notley's poetry are unmatched in contemporary literature. 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. Notley left Needles for New York City to attend Barnard College in 1963, desiring an escape from the isolation of her hometown. For some 45 years, she has striven against the forces that stifle idiosyncrasy. Early on, I understood that was something you could enjoy doing out of folk music. That was written in the Food Stamp Office in 1985. Somewhere, I have a photo of my father with a snake in his mouth and every year that he did it, he got a little tattoo of a star on his hand; and my mother danced the year she was pregnant with me the. Her poems have also been compared to Gertrude Stein, as well as her contemporary Bernadette Mayer. YouTube. Courtesy of Alice Notley, re-photographed by Daesong Kim, April 2018. Alma, or The Dead Women. That was one of the first things Ted [Berrigan] told me about John: he kept a list of titles, like Civilization and Its Discontents, then he would decide, Ah, that would be a great title for a poem, and then later he would check his list and pull that title out. 23AN: We were children then, basically. And Virgil: Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab orisItaliam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit: Thats the opening of the Aeneid and the opening of the Iliad is: , . DR: Its also what Andr Breton mentions, in his book. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. how to express it. She was married the British poet Douglas Oliver until his death in 2000. For some 45 years, she has striven against the forces that stifle idiosyncrasy. Thats why my poetry works so well. He taught some writing: one writing class, and one civilization and literature class. Ones not overshadowed like in forests elsewhere, but its particularly harsh, and hot: the Mojave goes up to 120-125 [Fahrenheit], sometimes. 63DR: 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. Its possible Im living in the apartment of someone who was taken away to the camps. DR: There was a pop song in the 1960s by the Three Dog Night. For example my poem In the Pines has been set to music by AroarA, who are two members of the Canadian, indie group, Broken Social Scene. Then I found all the spots around the world in them and talked about them as being set in the world as a whole, saying that was a fitting poetry for now, when were all crossing borders all the time: spanning geography is the main event today, because there are so many people. Reading The Descent of Alette was like listening to Alice Coltrane for fourteen hours while riding the NYC subway at 3AM in the 1980s. There was one called How Green Was My Hair Brush? which was a Ron title. She was in my workshop. In that sad, beautiful book, theres so much irony, whereas some literary critics take everything at face value. 109DR: I wouldnt be able to take the journey if I couldnt hear the poem.. To quote: If its a spiritual offense does it as wrongdoing take place more in more in the second leftover/ as a leftover and is the significance of the double now that I might be might the /one who offends Have you heard it read? I started noticing my dreams before I met Ted [Berrigan], but he used his dreams, and I just started doing it more after I was with him; then, after he died I did it even more. From her early days in the male-dominated New York School, Notleys work has been persistently, fiercely feminist, and this poems matter-of-fact mythmakingthe world it describes is ourspresages her later efforts to write women into the Homeric tradition. To teach them to you one-sixteenth Cherokee the food-stamp Office of bushes feel bad when I came here,,. I mean sometimes theres a poem called this kind of a painting Notre-Dame! University 's summer writing program and reading series take everything at face value Gertrude Stein, as contemporary. 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