Contemporary writers in the Anglo -American space [602801]

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Module title: Contemporary writers in the Anglo -American space
Module tutor: Dr. V. Olaru
Student: [anonimizat], 2nd year, MA student, 1st semester
Specialization: English – literature

ALICE NOTLEY – The Poetic Universe

This paper started with a thought of making an analysis of the contemporary American
poetry with putting an accent on Alice Notley’s poetic universe because she proved to be one o f
the most iconic voices of 21st century in the beautiful, but also complicated language of poetry.
In the second half of the 20th century, the traditional forms and ideas were no longer enough
into providing meaning and sensations to many American poets, and originality was becoming a
new tradition. The pause during this trend was made by Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl in 1957 , a
period in which the American society was facing some changes, especially in the rise of mass
media and mass culture, and thus poetry is making more relevance than before in trying to explain
how much impact has the technology and mass society on the individual. The American poetry
after the World War II was presented in an elaborate, generous and plentiful way and difficult to
summarize, however it can be put in a neat, attractive and required order for a better understanding:
the traditional (Robert Lowell) , the idiosyncratic (Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton), and the
experimental (Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery).
Ever since 1990, the American poetry was in the middle of some complex patterns and in
the extreme needing of a revival. The above mentioned poets experienced diversity as a present
blessing, and their very important contribution have made the poetry in the present days as we
know it, genuine and a symbol of richness and opulence.
Alice Notley was born in November 8, 1945 and she is an American poet. Although s he
always denied the fact that she is involved with New York School poetry movement or any other
movement in general, she became famous and important as a member of this group of people who
worked together in order to advance their artistic ideas. Her firs t writings were formal but they
also are considered to be the theoretical starting points for many generations of poets because she

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is considered to be an important voice on subjects like domestic life and motherhood. Notley’s
approach of writing lays in the experimentation in using her experience as a mother and wife in
order to build such an extraordinary repert oire of poetries; and her poems have often been
compared to Gertrude Stein.
Mysteries of Small Houses amazed me because of its deeply construction of the author’s
past. The poet regenerates the emotions, feelings and mysteries of her life into this gorgeous
collection of poems that outlines her growing up from a young girl to a woman and then to a highly
skilled and successful artist. Th e author managed to assemble the patterns of image, memories and
feelings in order to enclose them into these poems that are able to go beyond the range or limits of
time they evoke.
Mysteries of Small Houses was published in 1998 in the volume with the same name under
the shape of a con temporary Prelude; it is consider ed to be a poetry of the self, a poetry that
regularly and frequently behave in a particular way and has certain characteristics. Mysteries of
Small Houses is a psychological and spiritual poetry who aspire to a timeless re alm. It is built as a
monologue and it states a condition of soul, in this case a particular moment in the author’s life.
As the poet also states, the poem Mysteries of Small Houses is trying to accomplish the first person
singular as a whole unit and as v ulnerable as possible in order to make the reader to feel very
nervous as one can find himself in the verses.
The title represents an open window to the hidden emotions, feelings and sense s that the
author tries to describe throughout the lines of the poem.
The opening of the poem: “Poverty much maligned but beautiful/ has resulted in smaller
houses replete with mysteries”1 puts an emphasis on ‘poverty’ who is also beautiful and spoke
about in a spitefully critical manner , and thus creating ambiguity . Here, the concept of ‘self’ means
“I” and it is put under the mask of ‘poverty’ , who is given human characteristics, in order to lead
the readers to a very important question and that is: who you are when you are naked, completely
vulnerable? The composition of smaller things and visions full of mysteries lead to a bigger
concept: the self. The poem is a composition of unwilling and hesitant recollections rather than
nostalgic memories, in which the author came across ag ain with her furniture, decorations, and
with all the people whose passions, ideas and features made the place what it was: “I enter it again

1 Notley, Alice. Mysteries of Small Houses : Poems . Penguin Books (1998), United States of America, p. 136

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(…)/ and throughout frontroom bedroom diningroom kitchen room of washtubs and / porch made
my room,” (1998:136).
While continuing reading, this poem expresses a feeling of risk in remembering all the
things that the author experienced in that place. Alice Nutley manage to slightly introduce between
the lines a hidden understanding as if she were a forced person who has returned, especially
supposedly from the dead: “(…)but now it’s all shadows ‘cause inside its center I’m, or is it we’re/
It’s I’m that I won’t ever know” (1998:136).
The poem attempts and succeeds in making an investigation of the self by using the
author’s life experiences as an example; it expresses such rich experience in drawing images of
Alice Notley’s life. She remembers her marriage to Ted Berrigan and their life in St. Mark’s Place
and her present life in Paris: “(…) apartments where people die, again the strange dense/ center of
the four tiny rooms on St. Mark’s Place may be that/ Ted died there (…) Doug, do you think so?/
you/ lived there.” (1998:136). These memories and feelings that appeared after all those things in
the author’s life happene d, left something that cannot be expressed in Alice Notley’s soul; it left a
mystery which cannot be solved or understood: “(…) and so left a mystery vortex inside that fragile
apartment on stilts” (1998:136).
I believe the poem Mysteries of Small Houses is about souls. Here, Alice Notley gives an
incredible meaning to the word ‘house’. The poem, firstly, presents the author’s room of when she
was a young girl, and tries to recollect the feelings of that time, then the poem continues with the
memory of Alic e’s dead husband , Ted, and then it takes us into the present time, in Paris, when
the author is with Doug and “the apartment where we are now isn’t/ so poor, though it’s small”
(1998:136), then the lines proceed with a comparison between the “house” of the present and “the
house” of her grandparents. Each “house” represents a memory and a different soul, because the
events in the poem took place in a different time and the author was experiencing those moments
in a different manner, and thus each event leavi ng a mystery behind.
The poem is built in such a manner that takes us to a thought that the poet was in a trance
when she wrote it. The author has to come into one particular house while she was in trance . First,
she enters in “the house” of her room, then into the one of her past life with Ted, then into the
present, then into her grandparents’ house, and in the end into the house where she lived, in
Needles: “(…) if I could just slip into it – and if I d o I’m still whole but/ mum in old Needles”
(1998:137). One of each these different houses represents the author’s essential self.

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Mysteries of Small Houses is built under the shape of enjambment which means that the
lines do not have a punctuation mark at the end, and it is used in poetry in order to trick the reader
into thinking of an idea, then move on the next line, and giving an idea that conflicts with it.
In conclusion, I believe this poem is the most interesting from the volume Mysteries of
Small Houses because it is built as a recollection of all those peculiar and important events in the
author’s life. It starts with her old room, and then with the death of her husband and poet Ted
Berrigan, it takes us in one of the moments of the author ’s childhood, to her grandparents ’ house.
This poem is Alice Notley ’s masterpiece in which she presents herself as who she is: a child, a
woman, a widow and an exceptional artist.

Bibliography:

Hall, Don ald and Robert Pack, New Poets of England and America . Penguin Books. United Sates
of America. 1997 .
Notley, Alice. Mysteries of Small Houses: Poems . Penguin Books. United States of America. 1998 .
Poulin, A., Jr. and Michael Waters, Contemporary American Poetry , 7th edition . Houghton Mifflin
College Division . 2001
Van Spanckeren, Kathryn. Outline of American Literature , Revised Edition. Glo bal Publishing
Solutions, 1994.