When I began to compile these interviews, my only exposure to Alice Notley had been primarily through her poems, my peers’ and I’s dinner-table discussions, and, due to my close proximity to the Emory Rose Library, her artifacts (letters, artwork, etc.). It was her voice that captivated me: unique, fiery, and entirely unapologetic. I had to learn more about her. I wanted to be more like her. Soon, Love, Alice was underway.
I found myself thrown headfirst into Notley’s life. It felt like I was watching her closely through a window, like some of these words and artworks and photographs were things I was not meant to see. I felt intrusive. It had been like this throughout my experience in Dr. Sturm’s English 1102 class here at Georgia Tech; spying into the lives of the New York School artists and poets, as if their lives were ours to live. And perhaps they were. Alice and her peers openly shared their experiences through their work. And I discovered that in the case of Alice Notley, her life is worth the examination of any young woman’s, and young poet’s eyes - even if it’s just through a window. |