Alice Notley Forever

I was texting with my good friend, the poet Dorothea Lasky this morning, and she told me that the poet Alice Notley has died. We are both big admirers of her work. In 2019 when we were being profiled by the New Yorker for our astrology book, we told them we wanted to go to Enchantments on Avenue B, because we knew it was a crystal store Alice loved and went to.

We got a bunch of gems and glitter and other ingredients for a spell, which we did under a bridge somewhere in the Financial District, and the New Yorker definitely thought we were weird as fuck. We didn’t care. We talked about Alice a lot that day. We also share a favorite Alice Notley poem (“All My Life”). I’m extremely jealous I didn’t write it (which is how I measure if I like art, to be honest).

Alice Notley was only the second poet I met in real life (the first was Adam Zagajewski). It was in a basement at the University of Michigan, in East Quad (maybe 2004), which is the college I was in there, the weird art kids college, and there were flyers all over the place for weeks before, saying that a “New York School poet” was coming to read. I was already reading O’Hara and Ashbery but I wasn’t reading the second wave of the New York School (which Alice and her late husband Ted Berrigan were a part of).

I knew I was going to move to New York. There were no other options that interested me. But seeing Alice read that day was a big deal to me, and I didn’t know it would be. I wasn’t familiar with her work. I was a sophomore. I went to every poetry reading I could. But this one was extremely special. I remember her elegance and her confidence and how seriously she took poetry. She had a real reverence for language. She had integrity. You could feel it. You could just tell she was a real poet. No separation between poetry and life.

A lot of people probably get frustrated because I often use the phrase “real poet” — meaning I don’t really think there are that many around. And there aren’t. Alice was. I remember I came up to her afterward, and told her I really liked the poems, and I asked her if I should move to New York. I’m not sure why. I was going to do it anyway. She told me that she lived in Paris now, but that I should definitely move to New York because New York is for young poets. I don’t know if that’s me anymore but New York is part of my DNA forever. I’m a New York poet. Alice gave me confidence that day. I think I was looking for that in asking.

I don’t have anything eloquent to say really, I’m just jotting this down in a few minutes, only because I’m moved to in that way you’re moved by a real artist, who makes you realize art and destiny go together. And they have nothing to do with academia, or identity politics, or reviews, or fads, or any of that bullshit which has made poetry such a disaster today.

Alice Notley, you were and are a real one. I was always in awe of you as I came up.

When I worked in Paris for a while some summers, I would ask the people in that program why we never invited Alice Notley to do anything or come to anything or give a reading. And I never got an answer. I thought it was stupid and ugly and very much in keeping with academia’s attitude toward real artists.

I have always been so jealous I never wrote this poem, “All My Life.” You can hear Alice read it here. And it’s also below. Dorothea Lasky and I are going to go to Enchantments this summer and do a poetry spell for you, Alice. You fucking were poetry. God bless.

A