The Descent

Poet Alice Notley, dusky forests, and election season

In Alice Notley’s epic poem The Descent of Alette (1992), a woman travels through an underworld of subway trains–trains that sometimes take the form of a giant snake–and caves, meeting strange and ghostly personages who are forced to live underground. The woman undergoes a series of transformations as she comes ever closer to the “Tyrant” so that she might kill him, releasing the world from his thrall.

“Whirwind of Lovers,” Illustration to the Inferno, William Blake, 1826.

This book is strange, haunting. The form of it is striking too, as Notley puts quotation marks around each poetic foot in order to slow the reader down to a deliberate pace. For instance, the first section reads:

“One day, I awoke” “& found myself on” “a subway, endlessly”
“I didn’t know” “how I’d arrived there or” “who I was” “exactly”
“But I know the train” “knew riding it” “knew the look of”
“Those about me” “I gradually became aware–” “though it seemed

as that happened” “that I’d always” known it too–” “that there was”
“a tyrant” “a man in charge of” the fact” that we were”
“below the ground” “endlessly riding” “our trains, never surfacing”
“A man who” would make you pay” “so much” “to leave the subway”

“That you don’t” “ever ask” “how much it is” “it is, in effect,”
“all of you, & more” “Most of which you already” “pay to
live below” “But he would literally” “take your soul” “Which is 
“what you are” “below the ground” “Your soul” “your soul rides”

“This subway” “I saw” “on the subway a” “world of souls” 

For me, the effect of the quotation marks–aside from slowing me down and being initially a little jarring and even off-putting–is to create a sense of the poem being spoken. Perhaps it’s being recited by memory around a ritual fire, as Homer might have done, the shared story of a people. 

And of course those opening lines also echo the beginning of another epic poem of descent, Dante’s Inferno (here translated by Lawrence Grant White): 

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found that I was in a dusky wood;
For the right path, whence I had strayed, was lost.
Ah me! How hard a thing it is to tell
The wildness of that rough and savage place,
The very thought of which brings back my fear! 

I first read The Descent of Alette last spring after seeing Notley give a truly spellbinding reading at Duke University, and I’ve returned to it again this autumn, the season of gathering darkness. 

Like many people here in the U.S., I’ve been thinking a lot about how to stay grounded, present and awake as the presidential election campaigning reaches its money and ire-fueled crescendo. I’ve been trying to do “my part” in a variety of ways – writing postcards and volunteering at an early voting site, being available for friends who are feeling overwhelmed (as they do for me), taking breaks from the news when needed, and wrestling with the necessity of acceptance, whatever the outcome. 

Since Covid, it seems to have become clear in a more mainstream sense, that there’s something deeply amiss with where we find ourselves. It’s nearly a cliche now to observe that the majority of us are experiencing some variety of burnout, anxiety, depression, loneliness, fear, or overwhelm, and much of the media (social and otherwise) is now directed at helping people recognize or cope with this reality. Instagram is full of techniques for vagus nerve activation, ways to “declutter” toys and other belongings from one’s home, strategies for handling screen-addiction in ourselves and our children, and for meal planning for families on budgets and tight schedules. There is a pervading sense of ill health, ill spirit. People running as fast as they can to stay in the same place.

“The Vestibule of Hell,” Illustration to the Inferno, William Blake, 1826.

Feeling all of this this morning on my daily walk, the light still growing through the trees that are now gold and orange and brown, and trying to hold steady in the uncertainty around the election and what it will mean for the planet, those words came to me: 

“One day, I awoke” “& found myself on” “a subway, endlessly”

And

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found that I was in a dusky wood

And I wondered whether this isn’t where we are now, collectively, at the beginning of an epic poem of descent. A poem in which we are waking up together, out of a fog, and finding that all is not as it should be. That we are in a dusky wood or in an endless subway tunnel, divorced from light, but learn that we cannot emerge without first going deeper, down into the center of the earth, the center of the beast, for the teachings we’ll receive there. That the only way out is down and through. 

In Notley’s book, the Tyrant—who seems at first to be all-powerful—could be a symbol for any man with out-sized ego, influence, and death drive–Trump, Musk, Bezos, take your pick. Men who seem huge until their bubble is popped by the smallest pin. But the Tyrant is closer, I think, to an embodiment of modernity itself, a system that seems inescapable and absolute until it isn’t anymore. 

In the final section of The Descent of Alette, after the woman has successfully dispensed with the Tyrant, Notley describes the first moments when she and the others step out into the light of day and observe their surroundings, the world suddenly transformed. I’m quoting at length here because the passage is so beautiful: 

“The city” “looked ancient,” “still & ancient” “that morning–” 
“all traffic” “had stopped;” “all commerce” “had stopped–” 
“bricks were artifacts;” “windows, holes” “in the stillness” “in the
light” “I laid the tyrant down” “on the street,” “before the crowd”

“‘This is not really” “his body,’” “I said to them,” “‘The structure
we’ve just left–” “those around us–” “this city–” “how we’ve lived,”
“is his body’” “A woman” “then picked him up” “& folded him,” “his
clothlike body,” “till he was” “a small square shape” “Then she

laid him” “aside” “‘Must we continue” “to live in” “this corpse of him?’”
“a man asked” “‘We can change it,” “of course,’” “someone said,” 
“‘but the earth, all life here” “is structured on,” “conducted through,” 
“the medium” “of corpses,” “remains of corpses” “Very little”

“that is real” “just vanishes” “when it dies…’” “‘But can’t we make”
“something new now…’” “another” “began” “I left them” “& sat down”
“on a curb” “beneath a tree” “to rest & watch awhile,” “rest & watch”

My hope, in this season, is that we can descend (into the darkness of the solstice, into the belly of election week and its aftermath) holding hands as best we’re able, knowing that we are waking up into the beginning of a story that peoples have lived before us. That there are things to do, things to learn, and moments when we must also sit on a curb, beneath a tree, to rest and watch awhile.

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UPCOMING EVENTS: Washington D.C. and Bethesda, MD.

If you’re in the Washington DC area, I hope you’ll consider joining me for two upcoming book events on November 9 and 10 in which I’ll be appearing alongside two other poet-writers: Tyler Mills and Jessica Johnson. Details are below:

• Saturday, Nov 9 / The Writers Center, Bethesda MD / 6:30pm ET
  "The Poetics of Memoir" (register)

• Sunday, Nov 10 / Bridge Street Books, DC / 8pm ET

  Reading and conversation