Mysteries of Small Houses

Poems

Alice Notley

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Paperback

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English

Penguin Random House Australia
01 June 1998

Poetry by individual poets

Series: Penguin Poets

A Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Winner of the Los Angeles Time Book Prize

An autobiographical collection of poetry by Alice Notley, ""One of America's greatest poets"" (Poetry Foundation)

Alice Notley vividly reconstructs the mysteries, longings, and emotions of her past in this brilliant collection of poems that charts her growth from young girl to young woman to accomplished artist. In this volume, memories of her childhood in the California desert spring to life through evocative renderings of the American landscape, circa 1950. Likewise, her coming of age as a poet in the turbulent sixties is evoked through the era's angry, creative energy. As she looks backward with the perspective that time and age allows, Notley ably captures the immediacy of youth's passion while offering her own dry-eyed interpretations of the events of a life lived close to the bone. Like the colorful collages she assembles from paper and other found materials, Notley erects structures of image and feeling to house the memories that swirl around her in the present.

In their feverish, intelligent renderings of moments both precise and ephemeral, Notley's poems manage to mirror and transcend the times they evoke. Her profound tributes to the stages of her life and to the identities she has assumed-child, youth, lover, poet, wife, mother, friend, and widow-are remarkable for their insight and wisdom, and for the courage of their unblinking gaze.

By: Alice Notley
Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 227mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 11mm
Weight: 183g
ISBN: 9780140588965
ISBN 10: 0140588965
Series: Penguin Poets
Pages: 160
Publication Date: 01 June 1998
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Alice Notley (1945 -2025) was born in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1945 and grew up in Needles, California. She is the author of more than forty books of poetry, including Mysteries of Small Houses (Penguin, 1998, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize); Disobedience (Penguin, 2001, winner of the Griffin Prize); and Grave of Light- New and Selected Poems 1970-2005, which received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Her honors also include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Reviews for Mysteries of Small Houses: Poems

""Casual, forthright and perceptive, it is a culminating effort. Notley, as is her style, rarely shies away from unabashed, almost Whitmanesque generalizations, and here her bravery pays off. Again and again, she asks herself what poetry in America is and was..."" -- Publishers Weekly