Mysteries of Small Houses: Poems (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Notley, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140588965 ISBN 13: 9780140588965

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1998

Synopsis

Alice Notley vividly reconstructs the mysteries, longings, and emotions of her past in this brilliant new collection of poems that charts her growth from young girl to young woman to accomplished artist. In this volume, memories of her childhood in the California desert spring to life through evocative renderings of the American landscape, circa 1950. Likewise, her coming of age as a poet in the turbulent sixties is evoked through the era's angry, creative energy. As she looks backward with the perspective that time and age allows, Notley ably captures the immediacy of youth's passion while offering her own dry-eyed interpretations of the events of a life lived close to the bone. Like the colorful collages she assembles from paper and other found materials, Notley erects structures of image and feeling to house the memories that swirl around her in the present.In their feverish, intelligent renderings of moments both precise and ephemeral, Notley's poems manage to mirror and transcend the times they evoke. Her profound tributes to the stages of her life and to the identities she has assumed—child, youth, lover, poet, wife, mother, friend, and widow—are remarkable for their insight and wisdom, and for the courage of their unblinking gaze.

About this title

About the Author:

Alice Notley is a poet whose twenty previous titles include The Descent of Alette, Beginning with a Stain, Homer's Art, and Selected Poems. She wrote the introduction for her late first husband Ted Berrigan's Selected Poems. She lives in Paris.

Review:

1 - Towards A Definition
101
1965
1970
1979 A Dream
1992
2 - The Person That You Were Will Be Replaced
47th Birthday
Alette
April Not An Inventory But A Blizzard
As Good As Anything
A Baby Is Born Out Of A White Owl's Forehead - 1972
Becoming Egyptian
Bobby (first Visit Back To The States)
The Brain Is A Toy But Loyalty's Metaphysical
Bring Me A Pea Jacket And Sandwiches
But In This World Together And Not Passing Away
C. '81
Choosing Styles - 1972
Collage
Colors - 1973
The Common Ground Ask Anyone You Know
Diversey Street
Experience
Flowers
The Future May Contain Me More
Gladly Though I Lost It And Knew I Would
Go In And Out The Window
Going Back Mornings
Hematite Heirloom Lives On (maybe December 1980)
House Of Self
How We Spent The Last Year Of His Life
The Howling Saint T-shirt
I Am A Hardened Heart
I Must Have Called And So He Comes
I'm Just Rigid Enough
If I Didn't Shiver I Wouldn't Be Cold
In Needles And To Poet What Are Real Things
In The Basement Of Claypool's Department Store
Kiss Of Fire
Lady Poverty
A Metaphysics Of Emotion
Mid-80's
More Below A Dream Of
Mysteries Of Small Houses
New Dreams
The New York Human
Not Child
The Obnoxious Truth
Office
One Of The Longest Times
Owls
Place Blanche
Place Myself In New York (need One More There)
Point Of Fidelity
Prophet's Job
Remember What I Came Here To Do To This World Very Little
Requiem For The First Half Of Split
Self '78 Speak
Sept 17/aug 29, '88
Synchronous Chronology
They Cut Out Her Eye And So She Doesn't Know If It's Real
The Trouble With You Girls
The Tyrant
Vertical Axis
Waveland (back In Chicago)
Would Want To Be In My Wildlife
The Year Of The Premonitory Dream That Ted And Steve Left Me
You Can Give It Away
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0140588965
• ISBN 13: 9780140588965
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160