"In three sections that combine poetry and prose, she modernizes the myths of Media and Dido.... Those interested in mythology and political poetry will find something of note here."
~Doris Lynch, Library Journal
""Notley's oeuvre is a rich field for exploration, andThe Songs and Stories of the Ghouls is a wonderful place to start.""
~David Blomenberg, Sycamore Review
""these latest poems of Notley's are amulets, and their power protects as well as defends. Tamper with the ghouls at your own peril.""
~Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi
""Continual wars and women is a key theme of Notley's latest collection, it is a dark and trick book, she says, 'Ghouls don't really die. That's one of the rules of the Dead.' The past always comes back to haunt us. Possibly her most adventurous and experimental volume to date and certainly a long way from her New York school days.""
~Pauline Reeves, Beat Scene
""In three sections that combine poetry and prose, she modernizes the myths of Media and Dido.... Those interested in mythology and political poetry will find something of note here.""
~Doris Lynch, Library Journal
""Alice Notley scribes a deep voice, her ear floating in space listens to flames talk.""
~Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, Brooklyn Rail
"In Songs and Stories of the Ghouls, Alice Notley continues her fearless excavation, subverting traditional readings of Dido and Medea as exiled queens and jilted lovers. The latest in an oeuvre which seeks the missing—or overlooked spirit, or soul—Songs and Stories of the Ghouls makes thrilling claims for the power of dispossession."
~Claudia Keelan, author of Missing Her
"In Songs and Stories of the Ghouls, Alice Notley continues her fearless excavation, subverting traditional readings of Dido and Medea as exiled queens and jilted lovers. The latest in an oeuvre which seeks the missing—or overlooked spirit, or soul—Songs and Stories of the Ghouls makes thrilling claims for the power of dispossession."
~Claudia Keelan, author of Missing Her
"With her own natural, raw violence, Alice Notley reminds us that wars do not only kill people and bring down their houses, but destroy also their writings, their cultures, their civilization. Here she creates an intricate form of writing, balances song against story, to assert her belief in the creative powers of poetry, one of which is the power to bring about the seeds of a new culture. And the basic element of this new culture, she seems to say, ought to be a culture of love, love, the element most missing in the world we live in, and the literature we read.""
~Etel Adnan, author of Master of the Eclipse