Alice Notley's legacy is rooted in her poetic disobedience and innovation, making her one of the most visionary poets of her time, with a profound belief in poetry's power to connect the living with the dead.

Born in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1945 and raised in Needles, California, Notley's nearly fifty published books showcase her disobedient, innovative style that challenged traditional poetic forms and gender expectations.

Her early work, influenced by confessional poetry, critically addressed male-dominated poetic traditions and emphasized the importance of form as a site of poetic expression rather than private confession.

Notley's poetry was deeply influenced by and explicitly engaged with poetic forms like Greek epic and Dickinson, often making private female experiences publicly accessible and rewriting poetic language to include women's voices.

Her work frequently explored themes of dreams, death, and memory, emphasizing the fluidity of time and poetry's transformative ability to create new realities, as reflected in her poem 'The Descent of Alette'.

Notley's poetry blurs the boundaries of time, viewing life as a spiral and death as a resumption of origins, exemplified in her 'Speak Angel Series,' which depicts a universe healing and being remade.

Her poetry is characterized by a vigorous, energetic voice, employing rhythm, meter, and unexpected pauses, as seen in her elegy for her husband Ted Berrigan, 'At Night the States,' which mourns and celebrates his life and death.

Throughout her career, Notley was recognized as one of America's greatest poets, comparable to visionaries like Dante, Blake, Whitman, and Ginsberg, and she rejected gendered labels, asserting her identity as a 'great poet'.

Alice Notley passed away on May 17, 2025, leaving behind a legacy of work that consistently explored death, memory, and the beyond, reflecting her belief in poetry as a conduit between the living and the dead.