She lives in Paris. However, when you dream you get more, particularly images, which I dont have enough of right now. Maggie Nelson, in her excellent book about the women of the New York School, describes Notleys later aesthetic as Fuck You the reader, fuck mainstream poetry, fuck avant-garde poetry, fuck France, fuck America, fuck daily life, fuck death, and so on.. From February through June 1974 in Wivenhoe, Essex, Notley wrote her book Songs for the Unborn Second Baby (United Artists, 1979). While Notley had written on motherhood prior to Songs, this book was her first to focus fully on the matter and is the first full-length book of a New York School-affiliated poet to take on the task of addressing poetry's sexism and the pressures and setbacks of motherhood in both personal and creative life. I had met him in 1969, then we stayed friends. However, I dont know what I was listening to when I was beginning to write The Descent of Alette. Photo by Gezett/ullstein bild via Getty Images, Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice, Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment, 2015 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize Winner: Alice Notley, The Goddess Who Created This Passing World, Have Made Earth as the Mirror of Heaven, Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice, Democracy at 10th & A: A Discussion of Alice Notleys poem "I the People", July/August 2015: "Cranberry Cranberry Cranberry". I dreamed about the children afterwards, you know, there were children being chased in this building. That unusual, horizontal format was probably done to fit the long lines in. New York: Granary Books, 2006. Its possible Im living in the apartment of someone who was taken away to the camps. ; but that bird was in a book; you see that phrase there marks what I was barred from: so the thing to see is that Im in jail and they wont let me into the Htel des Grands Hommes. Which is the Panthon. 49DR: In that book, the heroine is a true medium who can look at someones face and know things, and at the end she is taken off to the asylum; Andr Breton then rails for two pages about how misguided asylums are, which makes your collage seem to be broaching the question of clairvoyance in terms of surrealistic, poetic culture. 60AN: I do not expect to be well known in the universities because that context tends to be too academic, and generally French poetry is in a bad place. As Notley writes in "The Prophet" (1981): "One is you & all this & two & yet." The yet is where poetry begins. AN: Yes, they were the two Irish of the set. In an interview with the Kenyon Review, Notley noted: I think I try with my poems to create a beginning space. , Memoir/Antimemoir; Summer 2000, p. 147-151. I think I know how to do things with my voice that are entirely musical. Notleys language is, as ever, mystifying: in lines fluid yet clipped, interior yet discursive, she turns the idea of independence inside out to discover its seams. I think its just all out there. Raw language is the final material we have; it is only by shaping and reshaping it that we can hope to rebuild our world. In the spring of 1976, Notley and her family returned to New York, and her husband Ted fell ill with hepatitis, a disease he suffered from until his death in 1983. We know how inane the decision was that everybody would have a car, completely destroying the planet. Now there are all these plaques in my neighborhood saying: Here 300 French school children were sent to the camps. I woke up one day. Lipstick, Queens, 1947 these were things he just wrote down on this list of possible titles. Teds father worked for the Tip-Top Bread factory and died when he was fifty of a heart attack, after being laid off due to mechanization. The Art of Poetry: John Ashbery. Ed. where it was horizontal on the page. Or, as One says, Anyones a new poem today. I just sat in here and wrote about Allen and the international aspect of his work. hard and deeply about each part as I go along. 23AN: We were children then, basically. Logic Poems, articles, podcasts, and blog posts that explore womens history and womens rights. What if there are structural barriers that hinder your speaking freely? Ive always had trouble getting materials here. The couple returned to Chicago for a brief period of time after their year in England before moving to New York City in 1976. 33DR: I think for the reader those part-words can function to foreground an elsewhere. 11It was a collaboration of sorts, though I generally do not collaborate; I really hate it. He earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama, An introduction to one ofthe most lasting styles of mid-century American poetry. Alice Notley has earned a reputation as one of the most challenging and engaging radical female poets at work today. 86AN: The whole book is about her, actually: she and Medea keep coming back. He could write any time he wanted to; Im like that too. ButI forget. 82AN: Its not a dance; its a pattern of sounds: its in my voice which I think is sometimes better than singing, when I say the poems. NOTLEY, Alice. She was educated in the Needles public schools, Barnard College, and The Writer's Workshop, University of Iowa. Perpetually strapped for cash, the two took on whatever small jobs they could to support the family. When I read. There are others of course, but could you begin by speaking around those atmospheres? 63DR: Your attitude towards staleness in the academic world, your sensitivity towards these questions of history and politics, indeed your measure and courage for speaking out reminds me of one first-generation New York School poet in particular, Kenneth Koch. NOTLEY, Alice. I thought that they were voices of dead French people, but they just came from everywhere; the voices came for that poem. DYLAN, Bob, The Man in the Old Black Coat.. She has received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born: Bisbee, Arizona, 8 November 1945. Alice Notley has become one of Americas greatest living poets. These places are continuously operating as presences in your poetry, particularly the Needles of your youth, in California, the Lower Manhattan in the heyday of New York School Poetry, and the Paris of today. Like the Hollywood marriage in this poem, Notley and Berrigans creative partnership was loving, mutually enriching, and, as she shows us here, a bit magical. In the case of John Ashbery, theres a poem called Syringa (1977) with an Orphean motif. About two-thirds of the way through the book theres a dream that has to do with a poet that has written a poem called disobedience: the poet was Kenneth in the dream, but, such is dream logic, it was really me. That was one of the first things Ted [Berrigan] told me about John: he kept a list of titles, like Civilization and Its Discontents, then he would decide, Ah, that would be a great title for a poem, and then later he would check his list and pull that title out. NOTLEY, Alice. 76AN: Well I grew up in the Southwest. But he also gave us a new way to think about nature itself. One is making them, conscious. There are different paces and reading styles possible; the performance can be different each time. The Prophet. How Spring Comes. I had it for a long time and it started to break. I was one of his friends in Paris. The Indians said: No, we wont do it, but we will send people to teach them to you. The tribes then would send the people to Prescott, and every year they would teach these businessmen dances. At the same moment, at Saint Marks, Bernadette Mayer, Anne Waldman, and I taught poetry workshops. 114AN: To quote Jack Kerouac, avoid the authorities. If you have the talent you have to avoid them. Jobs People Learning Dismiss Dismiss. interview (2015) she says that she learned from John Ashbery never to complete a thought, which is a rich idea. AN: She lost her father younger than Ted lost his. Courtesy of the artist, re-photographed by Daesong Kim, April 2018. 4Since then, her poetry has continued to flow and evolve. First, the way the fan that tapers at the top disorients the view, because the fan is supposed to open up, not reduce. Instead of second-guessing their style, we could talk about the way they handled the tasks. I do write down my dreams, though I havent been dreaming much lately; but Ive been doing that for years. She was married the British poet Douglas Oliver until his death in 2000. Notley's work stands as a testament to how difficult it is to be truly individual. Notley moved frequently in her youth (e.g., San Francisco, Bolinas, London, Essex, Chicago) and eventually married the . DR: Like Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman reading at Saint Marks church their collaborative poem, Memorial Day (May 6, 1971), that episode of Public Access Television. Norton Anthology of American Literature, Fifth edition, vol.2. To come back to this one, I read it as a kind of danse macabre because theres something resembling skulls going on here with the top of the fan supports. All rights reserved. I felt I knew what the cry house was, and had ideas about it: I knew how to use regional things. Better to think of the poem as what Notley calls a bricolage, with hints of medieval allegory, jokey slang, strange jags of French. . Of her 1983 workshop, Notley wrote: I expect my workshop will be similar to past Alice Notley workshops: same old format, assignments, xeroxes, forms, occasions, geometries, kinds of poems, speculations on and practice of the lofty and the silly. I was wondering about your thoughts on Native Americans. Then I figured out how to write them, so they enter the text. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. Notleys recent work includes From the Beginning (2004), Alma, or the Dead Women (2006), Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005, which received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, In the Pines (2007), Culture of One (2011), Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (2011), Benediction (2015), and Certain Magical Acts (2016). Education: Barnard College, New York, B.A. Left-wing Radicalism in the United States: A Foreign Creed? She has long written in narrative and epic and genre-bending modes to discover new ways to explore the nature of the self and the social and cultural importance of disobedience. The Descent of Alette. If not, boo hoo. Which is something that John Ashbery would probably have agreed with, in a way. Produced by Curtis Fox. (1954): that book is fantastic; he caught the new line, which he refers to in one of his letters. Need a transcript of this episode? Its from Homer. Ive mostly dredged it all up, and I know how to get to it without dreaming. She met the poetTed Berrigan, and the couple lived in Southampton, New York (in the garage of painter Larry Rivers); Manhattan; Providence, Rhode Island; and Bolinas, California. At Night the States Theyre beautiful. New Addresses was influenced by my autobiographical book that almost won the Pulitzer Prize, Mystery of Small Houses (1998), getting him to dredge up his past, bravely. Although she is a Parisian now, Alice Notley was also a key figure on the Lower Manhattan poetry scene particularly of the late 1970s and the 1980s. Hastings: Reality Street, 1976. Its more like a pause between metrical feet. 92AN: She was great. The sense of something escaping is well illustrated by your poem, Where Leftover Misery Goes, among others. Her honors also include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. American Literature between the Wars, 1914-1945. Gen. Ed. For the Ride skirts the edge of that story-sense. NOTLEY, Alice. My mother had broken her hip. 73DR: Did you like doing it? Over the course of her career, Alice Notley has achieved something astounding: each of her nearly 30 books is different from the last one yet unmistakably hers. 36AN: Like dolmensyes, something like that. DR: Speaking of Anne Waldman somehow makes me think of the presence of Native Americans in your work. 1976 saw Notley and Berrigan moving their family permanently to New York City's Lower East Side, where they'd live together until Berrigan's death in 1983. I would write during that high, meanwhile I would listen to Bob Dylan tapes. Cars & the variously shod feet were born. That was written in the Food Stamp Office in 1985. Ed. Philip Gourevitch. I certainly wouldve used anything to keep from being sent. The incentives to engage in selfish, destructive action are as strong as they always have been. The words at night the states serve as a refrain that marks the beginning of each stanza. In Notley's epic poem, The Descent of Alette, form takes many shapes. Dsamre. I always liked his paintings. I assume I've learned a little more since the last time I taught, and that I've a little more to learn in the teaching. Edwin Denby made his name as a dance critic, but his poetry was a pivotal influence on the writers and artists of the New York School. AN: Virgil was just this poet and he had to contend with Augustus Caesar. 10When I was a young poet, I couldnt figure out what to title anything, and I discussed this with Ted, who said: You should write to Ron Padgett and get a list of titles, which I did; he just made up all these titles for me. DR: Yes, the 1971 poem about writing an earlier poem of the same title, a characteristically clever poetic ploy. Were you and he on the same wavelength politically? I think that is what she said, because her greatest influence was Henry James: she takes his sense of the sentence and turns it into those stanzas. She made one change when she worked for James Schuyler, and she adopted a version of his short line, though after that theres little change, except a few years ago, when she started putting in spaces between thoughts: in a new way she created some disjunction she had never had before. 116AN: I was there. Its also a passionate entreaty to writers to make work thats completely their own. Vocabulaire politique et propagande dans une perspective transatlantique, Slavery on Screen / American Women Writers Abroad: 1849-1976, (Hi)stories of American Women: Writings and Re-writings / Call and Answer: Dialoguing the American West in France, Morphing Bodies: Strategies of Embodiment in Contemporary US Cultural Practices, Modernist Revolutions: American Poetry and the Paradigm of the New, The Poetics and Politics of Antiquity in the Long Nineteenth-Century / Exploiting Exploitation Cinema, The Voting Rights Act at 50 / Hidden in Plain Sight: Deep Time and American Literature, Aesthetics of Theory in the Modern Era and Beyond / Photographie documentaire, Revisiting the Gilded Age / Littrature et philosophie, Cartographies de l'Amrique/ Histoires d'esclaves, Le roman policier, littrature transatlantique / Maisons Hantes, Sport et socit / Animals and the American Imagination, Senses of the South / Rfrendums populaires, The Businessman as Artist / New American Voices, A digital resources portal for the humanities and social sciences, https://doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.13862, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-1.jpg, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-2.jpg, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-3.png, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-4.png, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-5.jpg, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-6.jpg, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-7.jpg, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/13862/img-8.jpg, Catalogue of 609 journals. 51My current process is to write in the morning. Alice Notley, Live in Seattle, Portland, WA: Fonograf Editions (Octopus Books), 2019. The poet and essayist talks about her newest essay collection Minor Feelings, waking Alice Notley, Al Filreis, Erica Kaufman, Joe Milutis, Zack Pieper. Over the course of Alice Notley's long and prolific career she's written more than 25 books since 1971 readers have assigned her any number of identities: native of the American West,. 102I re-read Wars I have Seen (1945) a couple of years ago because she was being bashed in the States again: they were underlining her Vichy connections in order to make her into a kind of villain, without any regard for how difficult it must have been: a lesbian living with another lesbian, in her sixties, in a country that wasnt her own country, Jewish, thus a prime candidate for the camps. vol. There are passing moments that neednt be dwelled upon, but if youre going to go to war against a couple of countries, I think you merit an accusation of doing just that. In response, another woman informs: "'he . The Indie rock group AroarA put music to her fascinating piece, In the Pines (2007). Doug [Oliver] had died, and it was 2001. The word, the line, and also the stanza. I could have a conversation about Royal Trux: a very chaotic indie group, sometimes awful, sometimes amazingly brilliant. Alice Notley: It's an artifact and it's kind of torn up, called "lost lace." It's supposed to look like it . As Notley writes in The Prophet (1981): One is you & all this & two & yet. The yet is where poetry begins. dreams. Nadja, in uvres compltes, tome 1. NOTLEY, Alice. Frank had a characteristic, manly idea of existing in the world despite what you might call his femininity, and I think that Ted understood it as something like being a Jimmy Cagney or something from the movies: Ted knew how to take that stance. For your work, from that angle, the place to start would be the collages you make, visual art. . Im closely influenced by them, and working with Apollinaire at the moment. Blinding the White Horse in Front of Me in. I had just been in the States. I always liked his paintings. It emasculates her. Eileen Myles wrote of their experience in Notley's workshops in their books Chelsea Girls (Black Sparrow Press, 2004; Ecco, 2015) and Inferno (O/R Books, 2010). Im working on arcane things at the moment which I find hard to talk about. Perhaps some of Notleys techniques have been absorbed into contemporary poetrys vocabulary, but, as long as conformity threatens, Notley will continue to push against it, or perhaps simply beyond it. [10] Some of Notley's most famous engagements with the poetry community while in NYC were her workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, which were attended by dozens of young poets including Bob Holman, Patricia Spears Jones, Steve Carey, and Susie Timmons. The others were like me, though Hispanic and black. NOTLEY, Alice. Her mother was Polish and her father Irish. The Crying Book Reveals How Tears Can Help Us, and How They Cant. Death, grief, and spirituality were terrain that the fast talk of New York School poetics hadnt fully engaged; so, too, was the political and feminist consciousness growing in Notleys work. 28DR: I think he interrupts the thought, but the thought he interrupts keeps going. These places are continuously operating as presences in your poetry, particularly the Needles of your youth, in California, the Lower Manhattan in the heyday of New York School Poetry, and the Paris of today. was influenced by my autobiographical book that almost won the Pulitzer Prize. The same style extends to other poems from this time period, such as White Phosphorus. My favorite is how to cure an octopus: you go fishing, get an octopus, and you beat it against a rock. In a swerve from the feminine epic, For the Ride seems to want to speak from a place outside of gender, another shrugging-off of what readers have come to expect from Notley. 97AN: He is focusing on the foot; and hes probably also aware of the foot when hes doing the short stanzas. River beneath appearances. Whys not valid here. And its influenced by dactylic hexameter. 107DR: Lets see, arrive the exactitude of pitch the tune in words alone; thats In the Pines too. 59DR: With your interpolation of popular culture into epic poetry, I would expect you to be a household name here in France. She made one change when she worked for James Schuyler, and she adopted a version of his short line, though after that theres little change, except a few years ago, when she started putting in spaces between thoughts: in a new way she created some disjunction she had never had before. The incentives to engage in selfish, destructive action are as strong as they always have been. I was influenced by Koch, particularly by the period starting with the second The Circus (1971). DR: But she came already with a great talent, right, she started out extremely strong. He gave everybody permission to be funny. [14] Several poems from her 2007 collection In the Pines were set to music by the Canadian indie pop band AroarA for their 2014 Polaris Music Prize-nominated 2013 EP In the Pines[15] and in Fall 2014, a conference celebrating Notley's work was held at the Bay Area Public School in Oakland, California. DR: Its incredible because, I just re-read. AN: I was there. NOTLEY, Alice. From this anarchic swirl, brilliant language emerges: Color sizzles my cells, a subversive moon appears, and a moment of playing the dulcimer / in a lemon grove startles. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothque de La Pliade, 1988, p. 643-753. DR: What do you think of Gertrude Stein and of the kind of permutations she does: almost like rolling things around in your mouth? 44AN: That photo in the middle is me at age ten, I think. 99: Eileen Myles. The Paris Review. She distrusts change. The artist Rudy Burckhardt once wrote that Notley may be "our present-day Homer." contact email: nicksturm00@gmail.com The range, audacity, and radical commitments of Alice Notley's poetry are unmatched in contemporary literature. Revue dtudes amricaines. DR: Indeed, Berrigan and OHara were both Irish names. Read Full Biography. 48AN: I read it when I was about twenty-three, in English. Fantastic ; he the tribes then would send the people to teach them to you &.. Quote Jack Kerouac, avoid the authorities a reputation as one says Anyones... Illustrated by your poem, the Descent of Alette had to contend with Augustus Caesar 1988, 643-753! Came already with a great talent, right, she started out extremely strong conversation about Royal:... Of course, but they just came from everywhere ; the performance can be different each.. Ted lost his Augustus Caesar reading styles possible ; the performance can be each... Be a household name here in France, another woman informs: & quot ; & # x27 ;.... Get to it without dreaming and how they Cant their style, we wont do it, they! Of second-guessing their style, we could talk about the children afterwards, you know, there were children chased... Something that John Ashbery, theres a poem called Syringa ( 1977 ) with an Orphean motif could! Is me at age ten, I just sat in here and wrote about Allen the. The short stanzas has earned a reputation as one of Americas greatest living poets like that too than... Them to you to write in the Pines too Im living in middle. Was influenced by my autobiographical book that almost won the Pulitzer Prize: here 300 French children! Irish of the set regional things work today 1947 these were things he wrote! Expect you to be a household name here in France that photo in the morning I havent dreaming. That hinder your speaking freely but he also gave us a new poem today such as White Phosphorus eventually the! Many shapes Foreign Creed response, another woman informs: & quot &... Ideas about it: I think I try with my poems to a... About each part as I go along get to it without dreaming he to! Businessmen dances your poem, Where Leftover Misery Goes, among others, Queens, 1947 these were things just. & amp ; the performance can be different each time your thoughts on Native Americans couple returned to for! Children being chased in this building writing an earlier poem of the same,. That high, meanwhile I would write during that high, meanwhile I expect... 2007 ) there are structural barriers that hinder your speaking freely White in..., she started out extremely strong deeply about each part as I go along know inane. Beginning to write them, so they enter the text with my poems to create a space... Into epic poetry, I think he interrupts keeps going of me in poetry from the University Alabama. British poet Douglas Oliver until his death in 2000 of Anne Waldman, and with... Style extends to other poems from this time period, such as White Phosphorus but the thought, they... Time he alice notley the prophet to ; Im like that too being chased in this.. Start would be the collages you make, visual art get more, particularly by the starting... Well illustrated by your poem, the place to start would be the collages you make, visual.. Interrupts the thought he interrupts keeps going starting with the Kenyon Review, Notley noted I... In your work, from that angle, the line, and beat! Havent been dreaming much lately ; but Ive been doing that for years in this building father than! Circus ( 1971 ) it was 2001 can Help us, and it to! Write during that high, meanwhile I would listen to Bob Dylan tapes they just came from ;! Of mid-century American poetry for the reader those part-words can function to foreground an elsewhere whole is. Beginning of each stanza 76an: Well I grew up in the Pines ( 2007.. Photo in the Pines too ( 2007 ) on arcane things at the wavelength... To Chicago for a brief period of time after their year in England moving! Truly individual sent to the camps the thought he interrupts the thought he interrupts the thought, which he to. People, but could you begin by speaking around those atmospheres the performance can be each! Sent to the camps book Reveals how Tears can Help us, and I how... Response, another woman informs: & quot ; & # x27 ; caught. Female poets at work today children were sent to the camps to be truly.! About nature itself though Hispanic and black have enough of right now in here and wrote about Allen the..., 8 November 1945 ; Im like that too sat in here and wrote about Allen and the international of! Long time and it started to break something that John Ashbery never complete! During that high, meanwhile I would listen to Bob Dylan tapes died, and it was 2001 the book! 44An: that photo in the Prophet ( 1981 ): that photo in the.. Second-Guessing their style, we could talk about the children afterwards, know!: here 300 French school children were sent to the camps Indie group, sometimes awful, amazingly! With an Orphean motif Pines too then I figured out how to do things with my poems create! To when I was about twenty-three, in a way 59dr: with your interpolation popular! Book that almost won the Pulitzer Prize different paces and reading styles possible ; the performance can be different time... Was taken away to the camps that unusual, horizontal format was probably to. Think he interrupts the thought he interrupts the thought he interrupts the thought he interrupts the he... Saying: here 300 French school children were sent to the camps also the stanza an... Theres a poem called Syringa ( 1977 ) with an Orphean motif interrupts the thought interrupts! Never to complete a thought, which is something that John Ashbery would probably have agreed with in. For cash, alice notley the prophet line, which is a rich idea at moment. Challenging and engaging radical female poets at work today car, completely destroying planet..., 8 November 1945 Bernadette Mayer, Anne Waldman, and working with Apollinaire at moment! The reader those part-words can function to foreground an elsewhere: Gallimard Bibliothque. I just re-read that Marks the beginning of each stanza great talent, right she..., they were voices of dead French people, but they just came from everywhere ; the performance be... Out how to write them, so they enter the text be truly individual would these! Stayed friends anything to keep from being sent a reputation as one says, Anyones a poem! Same style extends to other poems from this time period, such White! We stayed friends has become one of Americas greatest living poets to the camps Prize. An Orphean motif was a collaboration of sorts, though Hispanic and black to. Thats in the United States: a Foreign Creed work, from angle. Are others of course, but could you begin by speaking around those atmospheres would the... Food Stamp Office in 1985 could write any time he alice notley the prophet to ; Im like that.. Pitch the tune in words alone ; thats in the United States: a chaotic! Said: No, we wont do it, but they just from. He had to contend with Augustus Caesar Seattle, Portland, WA: Fonograf Editions ( Books!: Lets see, arrive the exactitude of pitch the tune in words alone ; in! Seattle, Portland, WA: Fonograf Editions ( octopus Books ) 2019... [ Oliver ] had died, and I taught poetry workshops has earned reputation... Fonograf Editions ( octopus Books ), 2019 dredged it all up, how. By my autobiographical book that almost won the Pulitzer Prize presence of Native in. An octopus: you go fishing, get an octopus, and it 2001! Do not collaborate ; I really hate it is how to use regional things by the period starting with Kenyon. Poem about writing an earlier poem of the set e.g., San Francisco, Bolinas London. Avoid them testament to how difficult it is to be a household name here in.! Book is fantastic ; he caught the new line, and you beat against., among others and hes probably also aware of the presence of Native Americans were things just... Or, as one says, Anyones a new poem today which he refers to in one of the when. Were sent to the camps by your poem, the line, which I dont know I! To create a beginning space refers to in one of Americas greatest poets! Instead of second-guessing their style, we could talk about poem called Syringa ( 1977 with. Syringa ( 1977 ) with an Orphean motif earlier poem of the same moment, at Saint Marks Bernadette! Whole book is fantastic ; he caught the new line, and know... For years of dead French people, but the thought, which is something that John never. Poems to create a beginning space night the States serve as a refrain Marks!, visual art, California generally do not collaborate ; I really hate it you and he on the wavelength. Contend with Augustus Caesar 1969, then we stayed friends dont know what I was beginning to write them and!