How Spring Comes
| Author | Alice Notley |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry, Fiction |
| Publisher | Toothpaste Press |
Publication date | 1981 |
| Pages | 53 |
| ISBN | 9780915124411 Search this book on  . |
| Preceded by | ‘’When I Was Alive’’ (Vehicle Editions, 1980) |
| Followed by | ‘’Waltzing Matilda’’ (Kulchur Press, 1981; reprint Faux Press, 2002) |
How Spring Comes is a poetry collection of thirteen poems written by the American poet Alice Notley (1945-). This novel was published by Toothpaste Press in 1981. This can be considered as one of her early works. This novel was followed by When I Was Alive. These two novels differ greatly as the majority of poems in ‘’How Spring Comes’’ are long extensive poems that typically take up more than one page. “September’s Book” is thirteen pages long for example. These poems revolve around her experiences in the past. Alice Notley meticulously uses specific details from each experience she recalls and transforms them into these poems.
History[edit]
The poems in this novel were written over the span of a few years from 1976 to 1979 during her "Notebook Period," which took place during the 1970's.[1] Some of the poems from this novel appeared in 432 Review, Mag City, United Artists, In The House and ZZZZZZ. In addition to these magazines and reviews, some of these poems were also included in one of her more well-known poetry books, Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems. The poems that were included were "How Spring Comes," "Poem"("You hear that heroic big land music?"), and "The Prophet."[2] The title page drawing was done by George Schneeman who she met through Ted Berrigan. She found herself having a lot of interest in George Schneeman's works. She was very interested in his process.[3] You can find other of her novels that have Schneeman drawings as book covers and title pages.
Synopsis[edit]
Throughout each of these poems, Alice Notley creates stories from various collections of past experiences. It's how she makes each of them unique. She delves into a range of topics in a single poem, such as "The Prophet", she converses about toilets, different countries, and the idea of marriage, and somehow she's able to bring all of these farfetched ideas together. These ideas are all very tangible, yet somewhat unconnected when conversed about and referred to. She's also very explicit with language and sexual references which contributes to all of the ideas she mentions throughout. She uses a different writing style in terms of rhymes, spacing, content, and length, in each poem. She writes poems without previous knowledge of what to write. She writes spontaneously as all her poems differ from each other.[1]
In How Spring Comes, Alice Notley "proves herself virtuoso of the word games and mingled voices, rhapsodic and goofy by turns, that characterize poetry decisively influenced by, among others, Frank O'Hara...she also asserts a startlingly individual fire and oddness" in her poem "When Spring Comes." Throughout this poem, you can find that her style "involves playful manipulation of a verbal surface that happens to represent bottomless subjective depths." She would typically take a line, and make slight alterations to them, which would result in huge effects on "correlatives of a sensibility that shuttles riskily between fantasy and reality, literary dandyism and a daily life of family, friends, and money worries." Other contemporary poets could achieve this; however, Alice Notley writes poems that could be considered successful, and others not.Her poems, "The Prophet and "How Spring Comes," show signs a successful poem with its charm, "positively gallant performances," and applicability.[4]
One of the most notable things about Alice Notley's poems in How Spring Comes is the freedom of each line. From one line to the other, there is no guarantee on what's going to happen as the previous line doesn't restrict the next. Punctuation, pronouns, and tones shift unknowingly, which allows the poems to be so personal.[5]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Notley.php
- ↑ Notley, Alice. Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005. Wesleyan University Press, 2008.
- ↑ https://www.nicksturm.com/crystalset/2017/10/26/from-an-interview-with-alice-notley
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/17/books/lines-from-la-and-ny.html
- ↑ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70225/alice-notley-101
External Links[edit]
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58140/how-spring-comes
This article "How Spring Comes" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:How Spring Comes. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
