The Descent of Alette (Poets, Penguin) [Paperback]

Alice Notley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Poets, Penguin | Publication Date: April 1, 1996

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

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Often considered a second-generation New York School poet, Notley (Closer to Me and Closer...) offers a vividly imagined book-length poem. The work reads like a postmodern, mytho-feminist combination of Dante's Inferno and the Old English Beowulf?from Grendel's point of view, in which the explorer/warrior is female and the monster/devil an evil, charming, sophisticated man called "the tyrant." The narrator, Alette, descends into a surreal, subterranean landscape, which is highly charged with metaphysical and sexual symbolism?a grotesque subway system, a series of caves and a darkened forest inhabited by "the snake" (a Mother Goddess-like symbol of feminine spiritual energy). She discovers the purpose of her journey is to kill the tyrant, who once nearly succeeded in destroying the snake. Throughout, lines are segmented into phrases with quotation marks, lending a hypnotic rhythm and spoken-word atmosphere, as the book's opening lines suggest: "one day, I awoke" "& found myself on" "a subway, endlessly."/ "I didn't know" "how I'd arrived there or" "who I was" "exactly." Notley's raw sensual language and imagery ("fetal flesh," "flower skin") imbue the transformation of landscape and Alette's own body (she becomes, at one point, part owl) with a startling psychological resonance. (Apr.) FYI: Notley, who now lives in Paris, was once married to the late Ted Berrigan.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140587640
• ISBN-13: 978-0140587647
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Feminist Divine Comedy?, October 11, 2010

By 

JeFF Stumpo (Martin, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Descent of Alette (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)

Let me start with this: The Descent of Alette is difficult to read at first. Notley "puts quotation marks around" "groups of words" "in lines" "that can be off-putting." Note that I'm not quoting from the book there, just giving an example of what the book's text appears like. This forces us to read more slowly, taking in each line a few words at a time. What appears to be awkward is in fact a great solution to the speed-reading most of us do these days. That being said, it's troublesome for the first few poems, less so after that, virtually invisible by the end of the first section.

When talking about this book, I immediately compare it to Dante's Divine Comedy, and I commonly see others do the same (see an earlier review here on Amazon.com). Exchange Hell for a subway, and you've basically got it: an underground realm ruled over by a Tyrant, poor souls being tortured, though in this case there is no indication that they have done anything to deserve it. Notley's language might not be quite as beautiful/harsh as Dante's, but her images stand with anything he created. After introducing two characters on a subway, a woman and her baby, both on fire, Notley writes:

"another woman" "in uniform" "from above ground"
"entered" "the train" "She was fireproof" "she wore gloves, & she"
"took" "the baby" "took the baby" "away from the"
"mother" "Extracted" "the burning baby" "From the fire" "they

made together" "But the baby" "still burned"
("But not yours" "It didn't happen" "to you")
"We don't know yet" "if it will" "stop burning,"
"said the uniformed" "woman" "The burning woman" "was crying"

"she made a form" "in her mind" "an imaginary" "form" "to
settle" "in her arms where" "the baby" "had been" "We saw
her fiery arms" "cradle the air" "She cradled air" ("They take your
children" "away" "if you"re on fire")

"In the air that" "she cradled" "it seemed to us there" "floated"
"a flower-like" "a red flower" "its petals" "curling flames"
"She cradled" "seemed to cradle" "the burning flower of" "herself gone"
"her life" ("She saw" "whatever she saw, but what we saw" "was that flower")

After surviving the horrors of the subway, Alette goes even deeper underground, passing through a series of psychological challenges that at times seem straight out of Freud, at times out of Classical mythology, at times out of collective dreams. Throughout it all, we learn more and more about Alette, who is not just a "hero" who goes through the motions necessary to the plot, but who considers and stumbles and is confused and learns.

The third section of the book is a rebirth, wherein Alette finds a source for a stronger power than the Tyrant's, and it is distinctly feminist in its nature. I need to note here for those who react to feminism in a knee-jerk way: Notley's feminism is not a militant feminism, though it requires brief "military" action on Alette's part. Men are helpful in the story, have purpose besides being the bad guy. If anything, what Notley attacks in the form of the Tyrant is the idea of a corrupt masculinity, a kind of Big Brother who would easily stand as an antagonist in any number of 20th/21st century literary works. Alette's feminism is the discovery of her place in the world, and that place is not slaving away mindlessly for the Tyrant, not acting as just a womb or pair of hands or pretty face. It's a nuanced message, despite the epic (and therefore presumably black-and-white) nature of the whole book.

The fourth section is the showdown with the Tyrant, a great deal of philosophizing, and an ending that I actually find more satisfying than that of Paradiso. I won't spoil it here, but it just works extremely well in conjunction with the themes of Descent as a whole.

If you want to be challenged, if you want to think deep thoughts, if you want surreality and magic, pick up The Descent of Alette. For even more interesting reading from the author and her partner, you could also turn to The Scarlet Cabinet, which contains but actually predates the on-its-own publication of Descent.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Women's Epics Everywhere!, April 25, 2004

By 

Megan A. Burns "meganaburns" (new orleans, louisiana United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Descent of Alette (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)

This book is so engaging I had to read it all in one sitting. Notley uses parentheticals to offset her narrative. It's an interesting experiment that challenges how we traditionally read linear works and how we perceive tales of exploration of the self. Part Dante in its underworld motif, part shamanistic in its vision and all feminine in its discourse with the history of the epic; it recalls the ancient Inanna myth while also employing contemporary imagery that keeps the reader engaged in this current experiment with poety and the role of the poet as visionary.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Contemporary Epic, August 25, 2011

By 

Kent Shaw (Huntington, WV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Descent of Alette (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)

I have a complicated relationship with most of the books I've read by Alice Notley. I admire her facility with the lyric, her ability to get just beneath a concept or sentiment using a very talk-y style so that I always feel like I'm with whatever speaker she's using, inside that mind and her mind all at once. This is a good kind of complication. It's one I yearn for with poems.

The unpleasant complications are when I feel as though I'm just being subjected to her unedited notebook entries. Too much, too much, too much. It comes up especially with her book Mysteries of Small Houses.

I mention these difficulties only to sharpen the accomplishment of The Descent of Alette. Like other reviewers, I feel the tonal similarities to Dante's Inferno. Which becomes a subversive allusion considering Alette seeks after a male Tyrant in order to destroy him, while Dante sought after his Beatrice out of desire. But I read and reread Alette, because Notley continually subverts patriarchal conventions in the book.

I actually find I crave the speaker's intellect, and the mythic logic that gives the book its arc. I want it more. Yes, there are quotations around each fragment in the poems. I actually appreciate them for slowing my reading down, and for sharpening my focus on the use of Notley's language. And it's not just a stylistic tic, or something to be endured. It could actually be described as further subversion of The Tyrant Alette pursues.