To Be Among Words: An Alice Notley Interview
This interview conducted by Anna Elena Eyre took place via email between March 20th—
23rd 2010
AEE: Perhaps we could begin the interview somewhere within the space of sun—the desert—as
I know you’ve just returned from Arizona. You’ve spoken of returning to the house in Needles
you lived in as a child to write from a place that was “not ‘bent’ yet by socialization”, how the
work you read as a teen—especially Faulkner— has stuck with you and that the aboriginal dream
time as sense of spiritual connection with physical space resonates with your poetics. If what is
experienced when young somehow deeply impresses perspective, how does the desert landscape
of Needles inform your sense of language—of writing? Why are Close to me & Closer . . . (The
Language of Heaven) andDésamère situated in the desert?
AN: The desert’s emptiness, recollected or gathered inward, makes most ideas seem frivolous.
On the other hand, what does exist has hard edges in that light – the objects, people, events that
are finally allowed to be written of. And the words themselves. When I write directly out of or
about the desert, I always feel that I’m being very clear and dispensing with whatever is
unnecessary. But I have a lot of styles, and I also write out of the cities I’ve lived in, out of talk
and foreign language and a lot of events, external and internal.
Close to me & Closer . . . (The Language of Heaven) isn’t situated in the
desert;Désamère is. Close to me alludes to a desert in the past of the two protagonists, but it takes
place in a heavenly, dialogic space. Désamère takes place in the desert because it is a globalwarming fable; most of the earth has become desert in it. Désamère is about global warming.
AEE: In Close to me & Closer…(The Language of Heaven) and Désamère the juxtaposition of
the heavenly, dialogic space with the desert of global warming distinguishes open spaces
wherein the grappling with unknowns constructs thinking. That is, I feel the books are both
speaking toward similar questions of what it means to be human from different vantages. Would
you care to speak on what distinguishes these spaces for you and why it is important that they are
juxtaposed?
AN: The two spaces of Close to me and Désamère are juxtaposed in the book primarily because I
wrote the two works one after the other. I think of them as being quite different from each other,
though I know they aren’t because I wrote them consecutively in about a year and a half. Close
to me, though, is still under the spell of the measure – the sound – of The Descent of Alette.
InDésamère I take on a couple of new metrics, the line of the lais of Marie de France and a long
surrealistic line; I am trying to be in France. The first book, written in New York, reminds me of
the bed in the living room at 101 St. Mark’s Place, which had become my “chair” — the part of
my workspace that wasn’t my desk. I heard my father’s voice there and communicated with it, as
“the daughter,” there.
Désamère reminds me of the ménagerie at the Jardin des Plantes, the zoo at that beautiful jardin
in Paris, which is the oldest zoo in Europe. I was visiting it a couple times a week while
writing Désamère and communing with the various animals in my way. I think the space of both
works is, finally, stagelike, because it’s dominated by the interaction of voices. Both works are
rather theatrical (though I wasn’t thinking about the theater). That may be why they work well
together. Both of them are also preoccupied with what the dead are like and what they have to
say to us. But in the first one, I hadn’t recognized that the planet was radically changing. This
realization I only took on after I had moved to Paris, radically changing my life.
AEE: I’m also very curious as to Robert Desnos. I know you had just moved to Paris at the time,
but what about his story intrigues you? Towards the end ofDésamère the speaker asks him to
leave. How does one negotiate the space of the oracular dialogic? What is your relationship to
the surrealist poets? Do you feel a feminine voice can/does/should embody surrealist techniques?
AN: The speaker doesn’t ask Desnos to leave (towards the end of the first section, you mean?)
She says she has to go into the desert alone. She leaves, and Desnos indicates that the others
there vanish. What I’d always liked about Desnos was the fact that he was the official dreamer
for the Surrealists — they’d get him to fall sleep, then wake up and tell them things about his
dreams, as if he were the Pythia. He is the perfect “device” for me that way. Also of course there
is his brave and tragic history in WWII, but I’m really interested in him as traditional prophet
figure. How does one negotiate this space? It’s magic! You become Desnos, you let the black
voice well up within you from nowhere, you listen to it and respond. You are divided equally
between the voices. It’s easy! My relationship to the Surrealistic poets isn’t particular –
Surrealism pervaded the 20th century world; my supposed femininity has very little to do with
any of this.
AEE: In Désamère I was thinking particularly of poems “17″ and “18″ wherein the speaker is
confronting the voice of Desnos as hir own thought—a temptation perhaps to be trapped in a
character or creature or naming?
AN: I’m not sure what you mean by poems “17″ and “18″. If you’re referring to the numbered
chapters or sections of “The Temptation of Désamère”, it isn’t Desnos she’s confronting. This is
a traditional temptation in the desert (cf the temptation of St. Anthony, also Christ’s temptation),
the temptor is the Devil. Who is based on a high school psychologist I knew as a teenager,
merged with some other people. He tempts her with social obligation, among other things, but
she isn’t interested in obligation. I guess I think one would do things for others primarily out of
love. I still can’t get with compassion, it seems so superior.
AEE: That you note both books are stagelike but not particularly of the theater seems to have
something to do with the voicing of the dead. Is it that the dead are not characters but rather
entities?
AN: I don’t think it has to do with making the dead talk. These books share qualities with earlier
works of mine such as “September’s Book” and “My Bodyguard” in which people – not dead –
simply talk, sometimes in no particular place at all (not even stagelike). For me the voice is a
primary quality of personhood, often obliterating setting and present circumstance: what
someone talks like. My first training, my first writerly impulses, were in fiction, and I
fictionalize, using conversation, character, and sometimes setting in my poems as well as story
— but I’ve also written some theatrical pieces, including a full-length play that was performed at
LaMama Annex. It’s called “Anne’s White Glove” and has never been published in a book of
mine. There’s an abstract space I like that is like an empty stage, with minimal light — I think
some of my works take place there.
AEE: You’ve noted that the poet “becomes more and more of a shaman” and in much of your
later work the dead are spoken with and through. What is the role of the poet as shaman or
storyteller? What relationship might we learn to have with death—with the dead that is healing?
AN: I’m not sure I can answer this shaman question, I’ve always been a little squirrelly about the
issue. Let’s see. I myself have become more and more shamanistic as people I have known have
died. Despite what I’ve said, I’m not sure this is true for other poets. Shamanism is a specific
practice or profession that’s foisted on you — by the gods — in traditional societies: you don’t
have control over whether you are one or not (though it sometimes runs in families). I, dare I say
it, am that. But not within a tradition. And I mean it really — I’m being frank now. I talk to the
dead. I don’t think I’m very good at healing though. I’m much too language-oriented; though
poetry itself is healing, isn’t it? Words are part of the traditional healing process, and poetry is
the supreme, the most sublime use of words given to us. There are things that words can do by
themselves – but really you have to concentrate on the art of it, in order to get them to do it. All
of this is tricky territory, not very easily discussed.
AEE: When writing, you’ve stated that it is important to be “very far above the personal.” Is this
similar to being “above the architect”? Would you mind elaborating more on why this is as well
as the importance of the impersonal poet in the creation of poetry?
AN: As far as the personal goes, if you’re too personal the words don’t come out right, you have
to lose yourself in the sound and structure of the poem or you won’t put any meaning or beauty
there. You have to be very, very good. Poetry is about the poetry talent: it (the talent) is very
specific and is served impersonally.
AEE: You’ve mentioned “sustained vision” and that (in an interview with Nelson) “the only way
to change reality is to recognize its dreamlike qualities and act as if it is malleable.” Might there
be a state of unconscious consciousness—that is, if there is such a thing as lucid dreaming, might
there be a state of lucid waking?
AN: I guess I think that writing itself is a state of lucid waking. At least for me.
AEE: In the poem, “Amid These Words I Can Know” in Reason and Other Women the line—
“not at all walking through my life as i often thing think but standing in place where i am been
will be not using words not making them not being them but being among them as they are
nature.” strikes me as resonant of your relationship with language. How do you enter a space
wherein you, as a writer, are among words and not presuming or assuming to name them or be
them? How does one situate themselves in the middle of words?
AN: To be among words. It’s possible that you have to be broken, as in broken open by events.
This is partly the shamanic thing, you have to be torn open and have your internal parts replaced
by things like crystals or, maybe, words. Then you are sewn back up and are different. Maybe
this happens each time you write something. However, if enough horrible things happen to you
in life, you will want to be among words, simply. Or. Less dramatically, you are like a composer
of classical music, you are given these objects — tones – to work with and you do it.
AEE: Are words for you somewhat tangible?
AN: Words are tangible, they are right here in front of you, visible and pronounceable. If you
mean, do I feel I can touch them, something like that (first meaning of “tangible”), I can go there.
But I tend to operate with too much light-speed to linger.
AEE: Reason and Other Women is astonishing in its scope, breath, and sheer intensity. How long
have you been working on this project? Can you speak of the process you undergo to write it?
AN: Reason and Other Women was written in 1997-1998, that is, the essential process of making
the poems was complete by the end of 1998. I subsequently cut and cut: I discovered I couldn’t
get the manuscript published, or even read, as was. It went from over 300 pages in manuscript
down to about 140 – 150 (European A-4 pages.) The book was rejected by everyone! As for the
writing process, I wrote it directly on the computer as fast as I could. I usually commenced with
a dream or image or phrase-idea and then pursued it in the winding way of those poems. The
next day I would shape that material, organize it into the stanzas. It took me about six months to
get into the process, I discarded a lot of preliminary material, but then one day I was exactly
there. I used reproductions of Byzantine art as a major source of inspiration. The titles of the
individual poems often refer to individual icons or mosaics.
AEE: You’ve noted that poetry usually has a line to the future. That Reason and Other
Women has remained unpublished for twelve years perhaps links to this. Do you think that there
is something in the air at this particular juncture to which the book coincides with or inhabits?
AN: I think Reason and Other Women has been published primarily because I found a publisher
– Charles Alexander – who was willing to read all of it and who didn’t have to consult with
anyone else about publishing it. I don’t think there’s anything special in the air right now that
will make people receptive to it, though I do notice that I tend to operate ten or fifteen years
ahead of a time in terms of techniques, certain ideas, etc.
AEE: A central aspect of Reason and Other Women is the renegotiation of symbol and in
particular icon. In “Reason’s Wound” she notes, “but i happen to know that the icons are in need
of us, in need of our thats all we have gold, to keep the still gold in place, so that we can be, be in
the icons.” Here gold is much different than money, it is a place wherein we can again be in the
icons. Money appears in much of your work. How or do you see money as interfering with the
human capacity to “be in the icons” or to live in a richly symbolic rather than imagistic
conception? Is there at type of money that is not diseased?
AN: The present world is nothing but an interference with one’s ability to be with the icons. It is
willfully that. Everyone submits to money, which is empty. But this is self-evident, and I don’t
have to prove it. Every step you take costs something, your food and your shelter are not grown
or made by you and are exorbitantly expensive; you devote all your time to paying for them. The
hierarchical structure of those receiving the most money in this process always gets smaller and
smaller at the top: ergo the tyrant, who is monetary and political power combined. Everyone
knows this but finds it to be too much trouble to change. Money is stupid. It has no essence and
isn’t even ugly, it’s just stupid.
AEE: Why do you think the realization of Global Warming came upon you in Paris? I’m
fascinated by your commune with the animals in the ménagerie at the Jardin des Plantes during
the writing of this. It seems to me that animals take more work on than solely the symbolic in
your poetry. To that extent, I wonder if you might elaborate on your concept of “snaketime”
AN: When I arrived in Paris in 1992 I was traumatically cut loose from sixteen years of identity
and setting in New York, not to mention my whole previous culture and language. I was
suddenly able to see the problem — of global warming — which I had previously paid no
attention to. One is ensconced in one’s life and only admits problems in when they physically
confront one, normally; but I was not ensconced anymore. I began to read up on the subject,
though there weren’t as many books as there are now. I became, and remain, alarmed. Re being
ensconced: No one, so far, has mentioned the global warming element in Désamère. I always
have to bring it up.
The sense of time is obviously dependent on the entity’s body. A snake is long, linear, it’s
relatively far from the head to the end of the tail; however a snake can also coil up into a spiral. It
can also move sideways as a sidewinder does. It’s a line segment that’s motile. One can probably
make a case for the snake, or snaketime, being the model for the line of Reason and Other
Women. ”Birdtime” would be quite different, a bird flies faster than people’s bodies can do
anything (except think), but, too, hops about on the ground, or rests, still. I think of “insecttime”
as being like one of those dreams that last about a minute in real time but involve ages of activity
within the dream — you usually have them right before you wake up. That would be the whole
life of the insect.
AEE: If words/names/animals cannot be presumed or assumed neither can law. In the poem “Et
un Ange Portant Le Livre du Monde” appears the line, “the piece of paper the tablets of
nonMoses, only predict fire the fire of the giving of the law which can hardly be spoken at all,
only known, as by the dead and telepathized,” Is there a form of law that is nonviolent—does it
have to do something with being unable to be spoken—with fire—telepathy?
AN: The “law” here is what holds the cosmos together at all. Or, it is the basic substance of
which the cosmos is composed. I don’t know if it is non-violent or not.
AEE: Can you speak to the importance of an act that is not an action? Particularly I’m thinking
of Alette’s usurpation of the Tyrant. In an interview (with Anselm Berrigan) you stated that you
“wanted to reverse the epic tradition by making the protagonist a female and heroic deed
symbolic rather than literally bloody as in real war.” How might this type of non-action act alter
consciousness/society? What is the strength in/of a symbolic act?
AN: I’m not sure any act is “strong” or worthwhile. I do know that only men are allowed action,
still; I think there are right now only five or six female heads of state in the entire world, and
most parliaments and congresses are majoritarily men, presidential and ministerial cabinets are
majoritarily men, the makeup of top echelons of corporations likewise. I’m mostly interested in
justice. I want to create an equivalent to what has been valued, for what I do — an equivalent
sense of value. I want justice for myself.
AEE: You’ve mentioned that as a young poet writing and in relationship with Anne Waldman
and Bernadette Mayer that three of you were able to “create a voice that a woman could speak
with.” Are there any comments that you’d like to make on how you Anne and Bernadette were
able to uncover/invent this voice or how this voice distinguishes itself from history?
AN: Anne and Bernadette and I needed a voice to speak in and we created that and then diverged
from each other each with her own version. These voices take us each where we want to go. I’m
not interested in proving that they aren’t male or something. They just are. If you will, they are
more like each other than they are like something that came before. Or if you will, they get each
of us to the icons.
AEE: If voice is the primary quality of personhood and a person lives in a society that does not
recognize their voice how does one act? Rather it seems to me that you’re implying that the
concept of action is part of faulty logic. In order to resist a white male western consciousness
should we rethink this notion altogether as action is what is perceived as agency? You’ve stated
that one can resist this consciousness through a rejection of the perceived need for protection,
can one resist through a rejection of perceived categorization? How does one be among the
icons?
As a woman or minority or poor person one is excluded from the officially recognized right to
political agency. One, however, can never entirely be excluded and is rather included as the
exclusion. Do you think there can be a culture that spans the gaps in identities without erasing or
negating identity among peoples? Would you share any of your thoughts on culture in regards to
the Culture of One? Is this related to an equivalent sense of value you speak of?
AN: I’m speaking of the voice as the instrument of continuous communication between beings, a
totally individual but nonetheless linking entity. The notion of action makes me feel tired this
Monday morning, as well as the notion of resistance – you don’t resist if you aren’t tempted (or
physically invaded), you just don’t do it. I’m also not feeling very interested in the idea of a
white male western consciousness: I note that the majority of the world’s leaders are in fact nonwhite males, who are pretty power-hungry, brutal guys. The only way to be among the icons is to
go there, it’s probably still a quest. You do it by yourself.
“Woman,” “minority,” and “poor person” are not at all the same kind of thing. I haven’t been
impressed by women I’ve talked to in the last year or two — it feels to me that some serious
further brainwashing has occurred, that it has partly to do with the election of Obama, whose
candidacy seemed to render women almost uniformly insensitive to their own condition, idiotic.
But given that. I’d say that the largest, most seriously oppressed group in the
worldisagainst culture at the moment, because all cultures define and constrain women; they act
as if that was what culture were about. In Culture of One Marie is her own culture. Period. That’s
the only way out I can see, one is a culture of one, choosing very carefully single other ones to
love. One never demeans oneself for their sake. women, as an across-the-board in-every-culture
entity, that they scarcely know this because they endure every kind of humiliation and subjection
for love of their families. Their oppression is embedded everywhere – in everything – we are, as
half of the minorities, half of the poor, half of everyone. I am largely
AEE: I wonder, just based on this conversation alone, how much of your work is unpublished?
AN: A lot of my work is unpublished, but I’m catching up at the moment. I write more than most
poets do, and there’s always a lag. I’ve piled up a lot of ms’s over the last ten or fifteen years, I
have a lot of early work out of print – also unpublished – but I can never decide if I want it
published. I have about four unpublished recentish books, but I’m not sure I’m finished with any
of them, they each need either a little more shaping or some form of combination with other
works that I haven’t settled upon.
AEE: If there is such a thing as typical, what is a typical day for you like? Do you write for a
specific amount of time each day?
AN: I write every morning, though not for all that long, perhaps an hour. In the afternoon I often
find myself typing things up or revising. But not always. I also in the afternoon often spend time
reading my latest work aloud to myself, but again not always; the only thing I always do is write.
Otherwise, I seem to spend my time jogging (every other day), doing shopping and errands,
doing a lot of correspondence, which often seems to include email interviews these days (not just
you.) I read quite a bit, though I tend to read trashy detective stories, but lately I read them in
French to keep up in French, so it feels a little like literary work. I’ve also been absorbing a
certain amount of information, over the last two years, about classical meters, the ones used in
ancient Greek and Latin poetry. I don’t exactly “work at” this, but I have built up the
information, which I am secretly using in my current work. Around 4 o’clock in the afternoon I
like to meet people for coffee and talk. I can talk a lot. Sometimes I go to readings, but not all
that often. Oh, every day I go out and buy newspapers, this is part of my routine (and definitely
part of my “work”), and read them, sometimes closely, sometimes cursorily. I read the Herald
Tribune in the morning and Le Monde in the afternoon. On Sundays I read The Observer on
Sunday, a British newspaper, and Le Journal de Dimanche. I could never have
written Disobedience or Almawithout doing this sort of reading, and I consider keeping up
politically to be part of my job. As is the reading aloud, a kind of endless sounding of work in
progress to find out if it’s right. For some reason I’m not doing it as much right now, perhaps I’m
afraid that what I’m writing isn’t good enough (a good sign in itself). Oh, again, and every
morning as soon as I wake up I write down any dreams I can remember. I sleep searching for
dreams, a practice that is like work too. Sometimes I work on my collages, but that has tailed off
over the last few years — as I often complain, I can never find enough trash in Paris. I am the
literary executor for two poets, Ted Berrigan and Doug Oliver, and I am often involved in the
editing of their work. I occasionally find myself in the position of reading proofs for one or two
of them almost at the same time as reading proofs for my own books, of overseeing an enormous
literary legacy involving three people and two countries. I have plenty to do. Everything I do is
part of my writing and thinking process, there doesn’t seem to be any part of my daily routine
that happens casually, though it all seems casual and doesn’t sound much like work. It’s all, in
fact, my work.
AEE: You have noted the role of the academy—MFA programs in particular—can maintain an
ability to sublimate “innovative” or “avant garde” or even “mainstream” work. How does a
contemporary poet involved in the academy that allows one to maintain a life of poetry in an
economic reality avoid any unhealthy aspect of the institution? Is it possible? What is your
advice for the young poet?
AN: My primary advice about teaching and the academy is don’t do it. You will anyway. My
secondary advice would be . . . I don’t know. Be mindful of the fact that there is no real
connection between the writing of poetry and the university — I mean none at all; that at any
given time there are only a handful of great poets — who are all these people the MFA programs
are attracting? They may be some pretty nice people, but they can’t all be even “good” poets, and
they are setting poetry standards, they are “judging” by deciding what will be taught and valued.
All of them, no matter their poetic predilections. They don’t have the right to.