Alice Notley

When I interviewed Alice Notley about how she wrote her book Mysteries of Small Houses, her explanation became one of the most unique rituals I have ever heard of for writing poems.  If you know her writing well the book looks like a "New and Selected" collection when flipping through it, but it is not, they are all brand new poems.  Here is why:

She put herself into a trance to visit the house she lived in when she was four.  Once she was in this particular house there was a door inside that she could open, and that door led to every other house she has ever lived in.  And she would go through that door and into the other houses where her ritual began to absorb the time and all that went with that time in her life.  She would then write a poem in the style she was writing when she lived in that house.

The POWER of these poems is immediate.  Her fearless voice comes through any fog we might be carrying when sitting down to read.  This is a sample of her reading "C'81" from the book, and it was an honor for her to dedicate the reading of it to my mother who hates poetry, but likes this one.