Alice Notley, "our present-day Homer" -- 1945–2025

"Poetry outlasts everything.

It’s a primeval spirit.

It’s probably the first speech.

It comes with speech.

It’s what children do, when they play with their first words.

And it comes from nowhere, and it always goes on."

— Alice Notley, 1945–2025

We mourn the passing of Alice Notley, author of more than 40 books of poetry, who died Tuesday, May 20. 

In the fall of 1995, with the encouragement of her friend Pierre Joris, Alice Notley joined the NYS Writers Institute for a weeklong residency highlighted by a reading from her work at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall on November 2. 

The artist Rudy Burckhardt once wrote that Notley may be “our present-day Homer.” Read a selection of her poems at the Poetry Foundation.

The Goddess who created this passing world

by Alice Notley

The Goddess who created this passing world

Said Let there be lightbulbs & liquefaction

Life spilled out onto the street, colors whirled

Cars & the variously shod feet were born

And the past & future & I born too

Light as airmail paper away she flew

To Annapurna or Mt. McKinley

Or both but instantly

Clarified, composed, forever was I

Meant by her to recognize a painting

As beautiful or a movie stunning

And to adore the finitude of words

And understand as surfaces my dreams

Know the eye the organ of affection

And depths to be inflections

Of her voice & wrist & smile

Copyright: Alice Notley, from Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1993).