Disobedience

by Alice Notley

Book Overview

Alice Notley has earned a reputation as one of the most challenging and engaging radical female poets at work today. Her last collection, Mysteries of Small Houses , was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Structured as a long series of interconnected poems in which one of the main elements is an ongoing dialogue with a seedy detective, Disobedience sets out to explore the visible as well as the unconscious...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141002298
• ISBN13: 9780141002293
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Totally Intriguing

This is the book that really threw me into Notley's poetry. I could not put it down and had to read everything by her after this. It was tricky to get into at first, but once you allow yourself to wade into this world it's hard to put it down. The book length poem is filled with recurring images, fictional characters, aspects of the self, and motifs that all create a collage. The overall effect engages you with its witticisms, lyricalism and coded language that you want to uncover like a detective gathering clues. I loved reading this with "Mysteries of Small Houses" and "Descent of Allette", because they are all experimenting with the poet's role in the world and with poetry's historical use to explore self.

Cutting thought

There's a future in this poetry, a future for poetry, if the new poets will read it, speak it, and try to understand it. The Descent of Alette equally marvelous.