I think I bought this because I read a poem by Notley in The Paris Review?
Huh, it’s not often you read a note at the start of a poetry collection giving a user’s manual… Do the poems really need that?
OH MY GOD
I guess they do, sort of, but once you get used to it, it reads much like most other poetry. That is, it seems like Notley uses “quotation marks”
the same way
other poets
use newlines.
(Although it’s difficult not to think of Zagat’s — ‘This “restaurant” has “good” food.’)
So it reads well, really, which perhaps explains why my Penguin edition here is the 19th printing? Or perhaps it just means that this book is assigned reading in All The Colleges.
Which would be understandable — it’s extremely American. That is, it’s all metaphor and spirituality, and … I hate that sort of thing.
I did read the entire book, but I should have ditched it after the amusing novelty wore off.
The Descent of Alette (1996) by Alice Notley (buy new, buy used, 4.31 on Goodreads)