QUARANTINE 5 - Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice
Here we speak of Alice Notley’s “Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice,” published in Selected Poems of Alice Notley (Talisman House, Publishers, 1993). Abetted in part by Sparrow having been Notley’s student in the mid-1980s, we turn up what insights we may glean about this work of dictation, actual or implied, from the departed Kerouac, touching on his life story and late challenges with the Beat movement he in part set in motion. This brings us to some discussion of the exigencies of the Lower East Side of New York’s '80s poetry forty years back, the New York School poetry “kit” and Notley’s seeming inveighing against scholasticism. We look into the virtues of the “knotty” poem, gender identifications (and ambiguities), the practice of channeling/clairvoyance, Mark Tansey’s “Triumph of the New York School,” Samuel Beckett’s poem “What is the Word?,” Dave Smith’s THE ONE PURE WORD, his critical essays on the poetry of James Wright, and speculations on the emergence of the universe (again). This podcast includes the sound of an undated video on YouTube of Notley reading the poem.