The Descent of Alette

by Alice Notley

Overview

In The Descent of Alette, Alice Notley presents a feminist epic, a bold journey into the deeper realms. Alette, the narrator, finds herself underground, deep beneath the city, where spirits and people ride endlessly on subways, not allowed to live in the world above. Traveling deeper and deeper, she is on a journey of continual transformation, encountering a series of figures and undergoing fragmentations and metamorphoses as she seeks to confront the Tyrant and heal the world. Using a new measure, with rhythmic units indicated by quotation marks, Notley has created a “spoken” text, a rich and mesmerizing work of imagination, mystery, and power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440621437
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/01/1996
Series:	Penguin Poets
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	231 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

The Descent Of AletteAuthor's Note
The Descent of Alette

Book one
Book two
Book three
Book four

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Working in an avant-garde mode, Notley seeks epic stature literally and figuratively in this new collagelike work. Her underground world of subways and lost souls cannot escape comparison to Dante's "Inferno" but does have its own agenda, both feminist and personal. The multilayered depths are the first and last similarities between Dante and Notley. This epic is a story of transformation and travel, a journey of imagination that is firmly rooted in the reality of urban, modern living. War veterans, the mentally disturbed, homeless people--they are real witnesses and participants in our travel, and we deny or affirm their existence by passing or stopping for them when taking a train or bus. Notley uses this real experience to give strangers voice and to create exchanges so often feared in daily life. Using rhythmic units that resound like dialogue, Notley weaves a conversation of motion and mystery. Underlying Alette's heroic travel to confront the Tyrant who torments souls are keen observations about people and life struggles. Throughout this epic are brief and perceptive comments that restate universal truths and reinforce the urge toward all that is right.

Janet St. John