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To Be Among Words: an Alice Notley Interview This Interview Conducted

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To Be Among Words: an Alice Notley Interview This Interview Conducted To Be Among Words: An Alice Notley Interview This interview conducted by Anna Elena Eyre took place via email between March 20th— 23rd 2010 AEE: Perhaps we could begin the interview somewhere within the space of sun—the desert—as I know you’ve just returned from Arizona. You’ve spoken of returning to the house in Needles you lived in as a child to write from a place that was “not ‘bent’ yet by socialization”, how the work you read as a teen—especially Faulkner— has stuck with you and that the aboriginal dream time as sense of spiritual connection with physical space resonates with your poetics. If what is experienced when young somehow deeply impresses perspective, how does the desert landscape of Needles inform your sense of language—of writing? Why are Close to me & Closer . (The Language of Heaven) andDésamère situated in the desert? AN: The desert’s emptiness, recollected or gathered inward, makes most ideas seem frivolous. On the other hand, what does exist has hard edges in that light – the objects, people, events that are finally allowed to be written of. And the words themselves. When I write directly out of or about the desert, I always feel that I’m being very clear and dispensing with whatever is unnecessary. But I have a lot of styles, and I also write out of the cities I’ve lived in, out of talk and foreign language and a lot of events, external and internal. Close to me & Closer . (The Language of Heaven) isn’t situated in the desert;Désamère is. Close to me alludes to a desert in the past of the two protagonists, but it takes place in a heavenly, dialogic space. Désamère takes place in the desert because it is a global- warming fable; most of the earth has become desert in it. Désamère is about global warming. AEE: In Close to me & Closer…(The Language of Heaven) and Désamère the juxtaposition of the heavenly, dialogic space with the desert of global warming distinguishes open spaces wherein the grappling with unknowns constructs thinking. That is, I feel the books are both speaking toward similar questions of what it means to be human from different vantages. Would you care to speak on what distinguishes these spaces for you and why it is important that they are juxtaposed? AN: The two spaces of Close to me and Désamère are juxtaposed in the book primarily because I wrote the two works one after the other. I think of them as being quite different from each other, though I know they aren’t because I wrote them consecutively in about a year and a half. Close to me, though, is still under the spell of the measure – the sound – of The Descent of Alette. InDésamère I take on a couple of new metrics, the line of the lais of Marie de France and a long surrealistic line; I am trying to be in France. The first book, written in New York, reminds me of the bed in the living room at 101 St. Mark’s Place, which had become my “chair” — the part of my workspace that wasn’t my desk. I heard my father’s voice there and communicated with it, as “the daughter,” there. Désamère reminds me of the ménagerie at the Jardin des Plantes, the zoo at that beautiful jardin in Paris, which is the oldest zoo in Europe. I was visiting it a couple times a week while writing Désamère and communing with the various animals in my way. I think the space of both works is, finally, stagelike, because it’s dominated by the interaction of voices. Both works are rather theatrical (though I wasn’t thinking about the theater). That may be why they work well together. Both of them are also preoccupied with what the dead are like and what they have to say to us. But in the first one, I hadn’t recognized that the planet was radically changing. This realization I only took on after I had moved to Paris, radically changing my life. AEE: I’m also very curious as to Robert Desnos. I know you had just moved to Paris at the time, but what about his story intrigues you? Towards the end ofDésamère the speaker asks him to leave. How does one negotiate the space of the oracular dialogic? What is your relationship to the surrealist poets? Do you feel a feminine voice can/does/should embody surrealist techniques? AN: The speaker doesn’t ask Desnos to leave (towards the end of the first section, you mean?) She says she has to go into the desert alone. She leaves, and Desnos indicates that the others there vanish. What I’d always liked about Desnos was the fact that he was the official dreamer for the Surrealists — they’d get him to fall sleep, then wake up and tell them things about his dreams, as if he were the Pythia. He is the perfect “device” for me that way. Also of course there is his brave and tragic history in WWII, but I’m really interested in him as traditional prophet figure. How does one negotiate this space? It’s magic! You become Desnos, you let the black voice well up within you from nowhere, you listen to it and respond. You are divided equally between the voices. It’s easy! My relationship to the Surrealistic poets isn’t particular – Surrealism pervaded the 20th century world; my supposed femininity has very little to do with any of this. AEE: In Désamère I was thinking particularly of poems “17″ and “18″ wherein the speaker is confronting the voice of Desnos as hir own thought—a temptation perhaps to be trapped in a character or creature or naming? AN: I’m not sure what you mean by poems “17″ and “18″. If you’re referring to the numbered chapters or sections of “The Temptation of Désamère”, it isn’t Desnos she’s confronting. This is a traditional temptation in the desert (cf the temptation of St. Anthony, also Christ’s temptation), the temptor is the Devil. Who is based on a high school psychologist I knew as a teenager, merged with some other people. He tempts her with social obligation, among other things, but she isn’t interested in obligation. I guess I think one would do things for others primarily out of love. I still can’t get with compassion, it seems so superior. AEE: That you note both books are stagelike but not particularly of the theater seems to have something to do with the voicing of the dead. Is it that the dead are not characters but rather entities? AN: I don’t think it has to do with making the dead talk. These books share qualities with earlier works of mine such as “September’s Book” and “My Bodyguard” in which people – not dead – simply talk, sometimes in no particular place at all (not even stagelike). For me the voice is a primary quality of personhood, often obliterating setting and present circumstance: what someone talks like. My first training, my first writerly impulses, were in fiction, and I fictionalize, using conversation, character, and sometimes setting in my poems as well as story — but I’ve also written some theatrical pieces, including a full-length play that was performed at LaMama Annex. It’s called “Anne’s White Glove” and has never been published in a book of mine. There’s an abstract space I like that is like an empty stage, with minimal light — I think some of my works take place there. AEE: You’ve noted that the poet “becomes more and more of a shaman” and in much of your later work the dead are spoken with and through. What is the role of the poet as shaman or storyteller? What relationship might we learn to have with death—with the dead that is healing? AN: I’m not sure I can answer this shaman question, I’ve always been a little squirrelly about the issue. Let’s see. I myself have become more and more shamanistic as people I have known have died. Despite what I’ve said, I’m not sure this is true for other poets. Shamanism is a specific practice or profession that’s foisted on you — by the gods — in traditional societies: you don’t have control over whether you are one or not (though it sometimes runs in families). I, dare I say it, am that. But not within a tradition. And I mean it really — I’m being frank now. I talk to the dead. I don’t think I’m very good at healing though. I’m much too language-oriented; though poetry itself is healing, isn’t it? Words are part of the traditional healing process, and poetry is the supreme, the most sublime use of words given to us. There are things that words can do by themselves – but really you have to concentrate on the art of it, in order to get them to do it. All of this is tricky territory, not very easily discussed. AEE: When writing, you’ve stated that it is important to be “very far above the personal.” Is this similar to being “above the architect”? Would you mind elaborating more on why this is as well as the importance of the impersonal poet in the creation of poetry? AN: As far as the personal goes, if you’re too personal the words don’t come out right, you have to lose yourself in the sound and structure of the poem or you won’t put any meaning or beauty there.
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