30th Birthday

By Alice Notley b. 1945 Alice Notley

May I never be afraid

especially of myself

but

Muhammed Ali are you telling

the truth?

Well you’re being true aren’t you and

you talk so wonderfully in your body

that protects you with physique of voice

raps within dance

May I never be afraid

rocked and quaked

the mantilla is lace

whose black is oak

But if I’m dark I’m strong

as my own darkness

my strength the universe

whose blackness is air

only starry

lace

But if I’m alive I’m strong

as life

Strong as the violets

in Marlon Brando’s fist

his dissemblance flourished into truth

She

took them

I’d take me too

I do

and my Ali I see you

a hard bright speck of me

the savage formalist

authentic deed of gossip

a kind body

Alice Notley, “30th Birthday” from Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1993). Copyright © 1993 by Alice Notley. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Alice Ordered Me To Be Made (1976)

Biography

Alice Notley was born in Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. After earning her BA from Barnard College and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Notley traveled extensively around the US and abroad. In 1972 she married the poet Ted Berrigan and had two sons with him, the poets Anselm and Edmund Berrigan. Active in the New York poetry scene of the 1960s and ‘70s, Notley is often identified with the so-called Second . . .

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