Alice Notley is a renowned poet, having published over 20 volumes of poetry, and has won an armful of literary prizes — the most recent being the Leonore Marshall Poetry Prize for Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005.
She is known for her challenging experimental poetry, which is also known to incorporate feminist themes with political statements. Making it, as said in the introduction, "prophetic."
Once Notley got onto the stage, her long shaggy white hair came instantly into view.
Its monochrome wildness was an indication of what was to come. That is, if her previous collection Disobedience hadn't given one already.
She wasted little time on an introduction, instead wanting to get to the real point of her visit, her poetry, as quickly as possible.
An introduction would provide context, which she pointedly wanted to give little of. Notley started off with her most recent volume of poems, Culture of One.
The poems revolve around the narratives of several eclectic characters in a desert town in Arizona. One of whom, is Marie, who lives in a shack in the town dump.
She has no job, and makes no money, subsisting off of an anonymous donor. Marie makes artwork from the trash, and her only companions are several dogs. Other residents are the Goddess of Mercy, her arms touching everyone, and Leroy, a pathological liar until he gets a truth serum, as well as a group of mean girls.
With little ado, we are rushed into this world, each narrative playing a part in the other.
The poems form a mosaic of both time and themes, which Notley dances through without hesitation. Her recitation was a breathless rush through the tangled verses, taking us distances at such speed, that it was impossible to sometimes follow. Some had personal resonance, as they ended with a few quick sobs, but not for long, as she quickly moved to the next poem.
A particularly harrowing poem details the plan of the mean girls looking to maliciously mess around with Marie. They can't burn her shack down, like they have done many a time, because she repeatedly rebuilds it. Instead they target one of Marie's dogs.
Observing where the dog travels every night, they conspire to put crushed glass in a tin of dog food along its path.
Later that night, the dog bleeding from its internal injuries after eating the glass, comes back to the shack, to die in the lap of Marie. Marie, covered in the blood of her recently departed friend, hears the watching mean girls in the bushes, and cuttingly says, "You're just anyone, and that's the worst thing anyone can say."
The poem directly thereafter cuts to Leroy, and the one after that the Goddess of Mercy, until suddenly we are back with Marie. The various characters, and their respective poems, overlap at points at different times in their lives, which can be bewildering and by equal measure enthralling.
Notley moves on to a second volume, also published in 2011, Songs and Stories of The Ghouls. This proves to be more difficult to follow, and Notley just as before refused to give any context.
Despite this, Notley's wonderfully expressive delivery serves as a touchstone, guiding us through as it alternates widely in tempo and pitch. Before beginning Songs and Stories of The Ghouls for example, she asked for a moment to readjust her voice, hoping to capture the timbre of Bob Dylan. The intention of this collection of poems is to give voice to cultures left broken by triumphant enemies.
Stories blotted out by the triumphal narrative of the dominant, "The ghoulishness of this project is affirmed by any style and there is no way forward but your empire's way."
Notley references Carthage, wiped from the face of the ancient earth by the Romans. Another example of this is the role of women in society, represented by Medea, the lover and brains behind Jason of the Argonauts.
In the end she is tossed aside for the Corinthian king's daughter, but in revenge kills not only her, but also her two sons she bore with Jason. Medea is castigated forever after.
Sexist anecdotes from the life of Notley are also thrown in, poking thorny fun at the powerful men in the literary world she has encountered.
These poems cast our attention to the countless sometimes-nameless victims of genocide ancient and contemporary. The room for the poetry reading was full and mixed.
Some, stalwarts of The Writing Seminars department, others students mandated by their courses in that department, but also those just glad to catch Notley on her first reading at Johns Hopkins.
Though at times cast into rough open water, the powerful intent could be intuitively felt.
Hopefully Alice Notley will return, and take us once more into her delightfully and difficult work.
