Quotes from Alice Notley

Someone's screaming from the basement, who's going away tomorrow; and I'm no particular age. I have no fear.

try to help us; you the past led us here . . .

I approach my holy, haunted railroad stations, underground networks, airports, trying to leave. I don't know what I'm leaving or where I'm going. I don't seem to mind, I'm in the state of traveling. Suspended. That's always been my state.

Evaporated I've never been there.

And I go in, it's just a portal after all. I don't know what's inside. Whatever happens next. Nothing happens; things coalesce then melt again

But this is a story of the end. don't you want to hear it

Convincing red-haired her to stay with someone -his son- who has another wife too, it's the father, who can convince anyone of anything: look at them convincing you still philosophy, science, literature- everyone's convictions come from them; in consequence a harping feminism... and this is my old hat. But it's only a few years old their old hat is thousands.

I'm not who I thought I'm not there or here

I have no needs. No country, no continent, no hope. I sit in blackness where I once lived. In magic, the only force I recognize. What is it? a face cries, skittering away. All that's left, I reply

Writing a poem, I construct a magenta fan with a photolikeness, enclosed in a central oval, of a beloved relation, with her hair brown that is not to say, before her hair turned grey: it's her essential self. Someone's jealous of the attention I'm paying her in my work because he wants it all for his art which is a pure, gridded, layer of words painted in crosshatched grey monochrome brushstrokes. Your art, he seems to say to me, kisses life's ass. His art asks that his own ass be kissed.

Does she come to them sooner, for all their rage to find her?

What can we do about our world? Why do you all make me struggle?

I can't help but be both of you. I wanted to be able to take a side and will never again.

Magic isn't easily identified

If I drop both swords and rip off the blindfold, I still can't leave, for I can't leave this world except internally.

I don't find it, I don't think it is to be found. It's like passionate love for a ghost

I was always pushed towards this place. Or backwards.

Who wants to see us anyway?

I'm giving all I am to all of this. It's for you.

Change will arrive suddenly for me.

We are the ones there are, and will always be.

I won't read this after I've written it, any kind of past life pains me now

being discriminated against as a tragic stranger.

I can't remember to be tempted.