For the Ride
For the Ride by Alice Notley is a significant new book-length visionary poem published by Penguin on March 3, 2020. This edition, comprising 144 pages, presents Notley’s exploration of ambitious themes through a unique narrative structure, where the protagonist, “One,” navigates a surreal landscape filled with glyphs and scenes that invite entry and interaction.
Readers will find a rich tapestry of imagery as “One” and other beings, survivors of a global disaster, embark on a journey aboard a ship to another dimension. The narrative focuses on their collective decision to preserve language, gathering words deemed worthy of survival. As they “sail” toward an abandoned future city, the characters undergo a transformation in their spoken language, reflecting the interplay between survival and communication in a post-apocalyptic setting. This work contributes to the broader discourse on poetry, particularly within the realms of American literature and the contributions of women authors.
Official synopsis Publisher
A major new book-length visionary poem from a writer “whose poems are among the major astonishments of contemporary poetry” (Robert Polito, the Poetry Foundation)
Alice Notley has become one of the most highly regarded figures in American poetry, a master of the visionary mode acclaimed for genre-bending, book-length poems of great ambition and adventurousness. Her newest book, For the Ride, is another such work. The protagonist, “One,” is suddenly within the glyph, whose walls project scenes One can enter, and One does so. Other beings begin to materialize, and it seems like they (and One) are all survivors of a global disaster. They board a ship to flee to another dimension; they decide what they must save on this Ark are words, and they gather together as many as are deemed fit to save. They “sail” and meanwhile begin to change the language they are speaking, before disembarking at an abandoned future city.
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