Thirty-Odd Functions of Voice in the Poetry of Alice Notley (Pamphlet)

Literary Nonfiction. Alice Notley has consistently peopled her poetry with the voices of those around her: kids, friends, husbands, strangers, and the dead. THIRTY-ODD FUNCTIONS OF VOICE IN THE POETRY OF ALICE NOTLEY offers an array of interpretations of this technique. While not aspiring to completeness, and limiting its attention to one formal aspect of a single author's work, this poem-essay sketches relationships between intimate speech and literary language.

Steven Zultanski is the author of several books of poetry, most recently On the Literary Means of Representing the Powerful as Powerless (Information as Material, 2017), HONESTLY (Book*hug, 2018) and BRIBERY (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014). His essay on Alice Notley's uses of other voices is part of UDP's 20:20 Pamphlet Series. His critical writing has appeared in Art in America, Frieze, Kunstkritikk, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mousse, and elsewhere. He lives in Copenhagen.