home

Add Review, Blurb, Quote

Add

Activity

Activity

Profile

Welcome to Litsy!

Litsy is a place to share and discover your favorite books with your favorite people.

Litsy is available on the web, for iOS and Android.

It’s fun.  It’s simple.  It’s all about the book. Sign up and get a little Litsy.

To respect member's privacy and keep things awesome, most of Litsy is hidden from Google. We let humans see and share pages, but not machines. Find out more.

This page is: Hidden

Trending Hashtags

22 users recently

43 users recently

#FirstLineFridays

25 users recently

29 users recently

#serieslove2025

25 users recently

40 users recently

Trending Books

Untitled

Untitled

41 users recently

Matchmaker

Catherine Walsh

7 users recently

Sunrise on the Reaping

Sunrise on the Reaping: A Hunger Games Novel

Suzanne Collins

22 users recently

A Court of Mist and Fury

A Court of Mist and Fury

Sarah J. Maas

5 users recently

Wild Dark Shore

Wild Dark Shore

Charlotte McConaghy

10 users recently

About | Help / FAQs | Privacy | Terms | Press | Resources

In the Pines

In the Pines | Alice Notley

2 posts | 2 read | 3 to read

A bold and strikingly original new work from one of America's greatest living poets Alice Notley is considered by many to be among the most outstanding of living American poets. Notley's work has always been highly narrative, and her new book mixes short lyrics with long, expansive lines of poetry that often take the form of prose sentences, in an effort "to change writing completely." The title piece, a folksong-like lament, makes a unified tale out of many stories of many people; the middle section, "The Black Trailor," is a compilation of noir fictions and reflections; while the shorter poems of "Hemostatic" range from tough lyrics to sung dramas. Full of curative power, music, and the possibility of transformation, In the Pines is a genre- bending book from one of our most innovative writers.

Amazon

Indiebound

Barnes and Noble

WorldCat

Goodreads

LibraryThing

100%

review

In the Pines | Alice Notley

Pick

pick

The title poem of Notley's collection is an extended postmodern prose poetry sequence, inspired & haunted by the blues (specifically Lead Belly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night AKA In The Pines). No one, the narrator, of the sequence is an ambiguous character. The reader has a better sense of her two siblings, a brother & sister, who have been victimized by the American mental health system & correlating stigmas regarding mental illness. On the👇

vivastory back cover, it states that Notley's work has “always been highly narrative.“ I think this is true, but it requires redefining our sense of narrative. Notley's work, esp in this collection, is a loose narrative that works strongly with associative, symbolic meaning & non-linear progression. The second sequence “The Black Trailor“ is subtitled A Noir Fiction. There is indeed a corpse here & even a scene that seemed to be paying tribute to Lynch's 2y

vivastory Blue Velvet, however Notley is not interested in a typical noir story as much as the underpinnings of class & gender that underlay a lot of noir books/movies. After finishing the title sequence last night I listened to the Lead Belly song & numerous covers. My favorites are Lead Belly, Nirvana & Caught A Ghost. The following is a fantastic review of the book which I found helpful in clarifying my thoughts on the title sequence as I was (edited) 2y

vivastory reading it:
https://www.raintaxi.com/in-the-pines/ 2y

78 likes2 stack adds3 comments

blurb

In the Pines | Alice Notley

Reading now