Costumed anti-war demonstrators at the 1971 Vietnam War Out Now protest, Washinton D.C.
* * * *
âPoems, a lot of the time, are supposedly not made up . . . but theyâre all made up. Everythingâs invented. The notion of concreteness is therefore very slippery. Iâve always wanted there to be something to see, and poetry is about the tangible and what you can hear. Itâs about the form, itâs about voices, and it generally is about telling things. We tell each other things, and so I allow a lot of voices in my poems. I canât seem to keep them out. I consider them to be concrete entities. At this point, when I write a poem, it seems like a community of voices. My voice is perhaps overpowering, but I donât know what my voice is. So then other voices come in and I try to let them speak, but I donât always know where they come from. I make them up. Sometimes theyâre people on the street, and sometimes theyâre people I know. But thatâs concrete. Voices are concrete.â
Alice Notley
[alive on all channels]
