The Register of
Alice Notley Papers
1969 - 2001

MSS 0319

Mandeville Special Collections Library
Geisel Library
University of California, San Diego

Extent: 26.00 linear feet (36 archives boxes and 68 oversize folders)

Abstract

Papers of Alice Notley, American artist and poet. Materials include Notley's notebooks (1969-1990), correspondence with other artists and poets, collages, sketches, and watercolors. The papers are arranged in four series: 1) MANUSCRIPTS, 2) NOTEBOOKS, 3) CORRESPONDENCE, and 4) ARTWORKS. The accession processed in 1998 is arranged in three series: 1) MANUSCRIPTS, 2) NOTEBOOKS and 3) CORRESPONDENCE. The accession processed in 2003 contains correspondence (late 1990s-2001), drafts of poetry and prose for recent books, notebooks, and collages, fans and other artworks. Also included are production materials for the literary magazine GARD DU NORD. The materials are arranged in seven series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE, 2) WRITINGS, 3) NOTEBOOKS, 4) GARE DU NORD PRODUCTION MATERIALS, 5) ARTWORKS, 6) MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS, and 7) ORIGINALS OF PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPIES.

Biography

Alice Notley was born in 1945 in Bisbee, Arizona. She received a B.A from Barnard College, in 1967, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1969. She married the writer Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she had two sons. After Berrigan's death in 1983, she married the British poet Doug Oliver and relocated to Paris, France.

Notley's writing and art responds to a broad spectrum of American culture. Her experiments with poetic forms and free verse owe as much to Gertrude Stein, Frank O'Hara, and Ted Berrigan as they do to William Carlos Williams. Like them, she believes that she is writing primarily to express her own personal tone of voice. She feels her speech is the voice of "the new wife, and the new mother" in her own time, but her first aim is to make a poem, rather than present a platform of social reform.

Among the numerous collections of verse that Notley has published are INCIDENTALS IN THE DAY WORLD (1973), WHEN I WAS ALIVE (1980), WALTZING MATILDA (1981), MARGARET AND DUSTY (1985), and HOW SPRING COMES (1981) which received a 1982 San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award. In addition to her poems, Notley wrote a short autobiography entitled TELL ME AGAIN (1982).

In addition to poetry, Notley has also experimented with the visual arts; her collection includes collages, watercolors, and sketches. Many of the collages are composed of everyday objects and images and are quite consistent with her poetry in that respect. A significant group of the collages are aimed at de-eroticizing images taken from pornographic magazines.

With her second husband, Douglas Oliver, Notley co-edited the literary magazine, GARE DU NORD, publishing five issues in two years (1998-1999). However, the production of the magazine was put aside when in the fall of 1999, Douglas Oliver was diagnosed with cancer from which he died in the spring of 2000.

Notley has continued to write both prose and poetry, published in such works as DESAMERE (1995), MYSTERIES OF SMALL HOUSES (1998), DISOBEDIENCE (2001), and the forthcoming COMING AFTER.

Scope and Content

Accession Processed in 1995

The Alice Notley Papers documents Notley's career as an artist and writer. The collection is comprised of notebooks containing manuscript drafts of much of Notley's published work, correspondence with numerous poets and editors, and collages and other examples of her visual art. The bulk of the collection dates from the late 1960s through the 1990s; the papers are arranged in four series: 1) MANUSCRIPTS, 2) NOTEBOOKS, 3) CORRESPONDENCE, and 4) ARTWORKS.

SERIES 1: MANUSCRIPTS

The MANUSCRIPTS series contains a play in three acts entitled "Twilight Vision."

SERIES 2: NOTEBOOKS

The NOTEBOOKS series, which is arranged chronologically, dates from 1969 to 1990. Entries document Notley's day-to-day activities and her personal associations, as well as her literary production. The notebooks also include drawings and Notley's meditations on others writers such as Dante, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams.

SERIES 3: CORRESPONDENCE

The CORRESPONDENCE series is extensive and includes letters from people prominent in contemporary art and literature, for example, Joe Brainard, Andrei Codrescu, Edward Halsey Foster, Allen Ginsberg, Douglas Messerli, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett, Leslie Scalapino, Anne Waldman, and Philip Whalen. The series is arranged alphabetically by correspondent and primarily falls within the time span 1988-1994.

SERIES 4 : ARTWORKS

The ARTWORKS series contain seven subseries: A) Collages, B) Book Collages, C) Box Collages, D) Fan Collages, E) Mask Collages, F) Sketches and G) Watercolors. Each subseries is arranged alphabetically by title. In cases when a title is not supplied by Notley, a title was supplied based on a topic sentence or major feature or theme of the work. The content of Notley's artworks vary from human portraits, women's figures, everyday life images and landscapes to abstract objects, shapes and colors. Her style is sensuous, lyrical, humorous, and even transnational. She often incorporates traditional elements of Chinese and Japanese art in her collages.

Accession Processed in 1998

The accession processed in 1998 contains a typescript of CLOSE TO ME AND CLOSER... (LANGUAGE OF HEAVEN) AND DESAMERE (1995), notebooks (1990-1994) and correspondence (1991-1997).

Accession Processed in 2003

The accession processed in 2003 supplements the first two accessions and includes correspondence, notebooks, manuscripts, and artworks. In addition, it contains materials related to Notley and Doug Oliver's editing of the literary magazine, GARE DU NORD. The bulk of the accession dates from the late 1990s through 2001 and is arranged in seven series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE, 2) WRITINGS, 3) NOTEBOOKS, 4) GARE DU NORD PRODUCTION MATERIALS, 5) ARTWORKS, 6) MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS and 7) ORIGINALS OF PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPIES.

SERIES 1: CORRESPONDENCE

The CORRESPONDENCE series, arranged alphabetically, continues the earlier accessions, with materials dating mostly from the late 1990s through 2001. It includes correspondence with many prominent artists and writers, as well as a number of younger writers. Most extensive in this series are the correspondence files with Katy Lederer, Eleanor Nauen, Leslie Scalapino, Eleni Sikelianos, and Anne Waldman.

SERIES 2: WRITINGS

The WRITINGS series, arranged chrolologically, contains a number of drafts and typescripts of published books, as well as essays. Included are materials for HOMER's ART (1990), DESAMERE (1995), DESCENT OF ALETTE (1996), MYSTERIES OF SMALL HOUSES (1988), and DISOBEDIENCE (2001).

SERIES 3: NOTEBOOKS

The NOTEBOOKS series includes a number of small and large notebooks dating from roughly 1988-1997. These notebooks contain notes and drafts for various essays and poems published in DISOBEDIENCE (2001), as well as a forthcoming book, COMING AFTER, soon to be published by Ann Arbor Press. The series is arranged chronologically.

SERIES 4: GARE DU NORD PRODUCTION MATERIALS

The GARE DU NORD PRODUCTION MATERIALS series contains materials related to the publishing of the literary magazine which Notley and her husband, Douglas Oliver, founded and edited from 1997 through 1999. It contains correspondence, manuscripts and paste-ups associated with each issue, and is arranged chronologically by issue. Within each issue, however, the materials are arranged alphabetically according to the authors' last names.

SERIES 5: ARTWORKS

The ARTWORKS series is arranged in two subseries: A) Fans and Collages and B) Miscellaneous.

A) The Fans and Collages subseries, arranged alphabetically by title, contains a number of works which contain collage-elements, including a number of fans decorated with paint and collage. Many of the works include everyday-objects, such as a key, beads, lace, and stamps, as well as cut-out pieces from magazines.

B) The Miscellaneous subseries contains many pages from Notley's sketchbooks. Many of these works are done in pen-and-ink and watercolor, but there are some other media used as well. Also included are flyers for poetry readings which Notley created and works for Ted Berrigan (her first husband), and Douglas Oliver (her second husband). The subseries is arranged alphabetically.

SERIES 6: MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS

This series contains flyers and announcements for readings and conferences in which Notley participated, as well as some unidentified items.

SERIES 7: ORIGINALS OF PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPIES

The ORIGINALS OF PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPIES series contains the originals of brittle or high acid content documents that have been photocopied.

Finding aid generated: 2005-10-31