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Loading... Mysteries of Small Houses (Penguin Poets)by Alice Notley
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book is many things simultaneously: a collection of experimental poems utilizing different female personae; a cry of abject despair regarding US foreign policy; a set of incantations, curses, and other witchery; a call for the creation of a new species, defecting from the old. The fact that none of these things are particularly popular make it all the more impressive that this book ever made it to press. Enjoyable in small doses, sobering at its full length (at 344 pages it dwarfs most other volumes of contemporary poetry on my shelf). Review of Mysteries of Small Houses, 1998, 160 pages (it seems like multiple works are all tucked into this work ID number): Very good, manages to stay inside the mirror rather than degenerating into sophism or angst-confession. Combines the funny-serious insight of McHugh: manager and part owner of Needles Auto Supply; he certainly supplies me with auto parts, pieces of subcutaneous self. with the narrative exorcism familiar from Sharon Olds: I haven't written well for a while, which do I want more Poetry or life? no reviews | add a review
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Alice Notley vividly reconstructs the mysteries, longings, and emotions of her past in this brilliant new collection of poems that charts her growth from young girl to young woman to accomplished artist. In this volume, memories of her childhood in the California desert spring to life through evocative renderings of the American landscape, circa 1950. Likewise, her coming of age as a poet in the turbulent sixties is evoked through the era's angry, creative energy. As she looks backward with the perspective that time and age allows, Notley ably captures the immediacy of youth's passion while offering her own dry-eyed interpretations of the events of a life lived close to the bone. Like the colorful collages she assembles from paper and other found materials, Notley erects structures of image and feeling to house the memories that swirl around her in the present.In their feverish, intelligent renderings of moments both precise and ephemeral, Notley's poems manage to mirror and transcend the times they evoke. Her profound tributes to the stages of her life and to the identities she has assumed--child, youth, lover, poet, wife, mother, friend, and widow--are remarkable for their insight and wisdom, and for the courage of their unblinking gaze. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)811.54Literature English (North America) American poetry 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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