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Alice Notley
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The poet Alice Notley (born 1945 Bisbee, Arizona/USA) was for a long time an insider’s tip of the avant-garde, admired and praised primarily by other poets: a poets’ poet. She was part of the so-called New York School, from which such important poets as Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery and Ted Berrigan emerged. Her work is marked by its transgression of boundaries in every direction. Every new book – by now more than 30 – is a radical contribution to the expansion of the poetic form today, and what it is capable of achieving. For Notley, poetry is not simply an instrument that serves the representation of experience. For her, poetry becomes an instrument of this experience itself. Her texts create large oscillation frequencies through resonances from high and popular culture: influences span from the Divine Comedy (“The Descent of Alette”) through the black series (“Disobedience”) up to country and folk music (“In the Pines”).
Publications (selected)
The Descent of Alette, Penguin 1996
Mysteries of Small Houses, Penguin 1998
Disobedience, Penguin 2001
Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005. Wesleyan University Press 2008
In the Pines, Penguin 2007
Culture of One, Penguin 2011
Songs and Stories of the Ghouls, Wesleyan University Press 2011