Certain Magical Acts
-
- 11,99 €
-
- 11,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
An important new work of poetry from Alice Notley, winner of the 2015 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Alice Notley has become one of the most highly regarded figures in American poetry, a master of the visionary mode acclaimed for genre-bending book-length poems of great ambition and adventurousness. Her newest work sets out to explore the world and its difficulties, from the recent economic crisis and climate change to the sorrow of violence and the disappointment of democracy or any other political system. Notley channels these themes in a mix of several longer poems - one is a kind of spy novella in which the author is discovered to be a secret agent of the dead, another an extended message found in a manuscript in a future defunct world - with some unique shorter pieces. Varying formally between long expansive lines, a mysteriously cohering sequence in meters reminiscent of ancient Latin, a narration with a postmodern broken surface, and the occasional sonnet, these are grand poems, inviting the reader to be grand enough to survive, spiritually, a planet's ruin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"I'm/ trying to invent a new language; I was told to/ by someone who doesn't exist," exclaims Notley (Benediction) near the midpoint of her almost shockingly ambitious 36th book. An inspiration to countercultural writers since the 1970s, a recorder of visions, and a pioneer of feminist experiment, the Paris-based Notley announces in 13 capacious, direct poems (most of them sequences) her challenge to the rules that govern this world, including capitalism and militarism, as well as life and death. "I sing to discover the rude/ unboundedness of space, and to unite myself with it," she declares; that poem's title, "I Think Fiercely," tells nothing less than truth. One set of quasi-sonnets locates the poet in the midst of a bombing (or terrorist attack); others use Greek parallels (Iphigenia, Cassandra) to grieve dead friends. Yet Notley's aspiration is universal, a big prophetic multiplicity asking what "I" and "we" mean now, and where, and why. "I AM A MULTIPLE AGENT," she says, "I am the story leading you to freedom." What might be disorganization comes across, instead, as a late style impatient with niceties, eager to bring readers into her fold. "You still haven't told me what/ happened to the world. I do know but don't yet know how to say it," Notley muses in "Black Violets"; and yet "I am giving you yourself."
