Disobedience Quotes

“Abolish these categories of pain
(or is it love)
Let it all be one pain
Pain swallows itself, dies like a star.”
― Alice Notley, Disobedience

“I don't know why it was
a tragedy, the world.”
― Alice Notley, Disobedience

“Writing a poem, I
construct a magenta fan
with a photolikeness, enclosed in a central oval,
of a beloved relation,
with her hair brown
that is not to say, before her hair turned grey:
it's her essential self.

Someone's jealous of the attention
I'm paying her in my work
because he wants it all for his art
which is a pure, gridded, layer of words
painted in crosshatched grey monochrome brushstrokes.
Your art, he seems to say to me, kisses life's ass.
His art asks that his own ass be kissed.”
― Alice Notley, Disobedience