Alice Notley, Poetry Reading

The Yale Collection of American Literature Reading Series welcomes Alice Notely. Poet Alice Notley, who was active in the New York poetry scene of the 1970s, is often identified with the so-called second generation New York School poets, though her work also shows the influence of Modernist writers like William Carlos Williams and Gertrude Stein. Taking on themes ranging from cultural politics to gender, Notley's later style has evolved into a formally ambitious attempt to transcribe thought itself. According to Joel Brouwer in the New York Times, the "radical freshness" of Notley's poems "stems not from what they talk about, but how they talk, in a stream-of-consciousness style that both describes and dramatizes the movement of the poet's restless mind, leaping associatively from one idea or sound to the next without any irritable reaching after reason or plot."

Notley has published over 25 books of poetry. In addition to the Marshall and Griffin prizes, Notley has received the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She currently lives in Paris.

Alice Notley's latest publication, 'Songs and Stories of the Ghouls,' will be available at the Yale Bookstore, April 18-20.