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When I Was Alive is a poetry collection of 56 poems written by the American poet Alice Notley (1945-). This novel was published by Vehicle Editions in 1980. This can be considered as one of her early works. The book's poems address a variety of topics that all pertain to her own experience. In her writing, she felt as though she was the first person writing these poems. She focused less on voice, and more so on who she was.

History
The poems in the novel were all written in previous years spanning from 1976 to 1977 in New York, in which she would typically use notebooks to write her poems in place of typewriters. She considered the 1970’s her “Notebook Period.” It was right around the time she returned to New York from England, which came with a shift of audience, people and environment. Some of the poems in this novel are included in one of her most recognized poetry books, ‘’’Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems (1970-2005)’’’, including “When I Was Alive,” “After Tsang Chih,” “Today,” and “The World, All That Live & All That Occur.“ Also, some of these poems appeared in multiple magazines: Dodgems, United Artists, Ladies Museum, 432 Review, St. Mark's Poetry Project Newsletter, Saturday Morning, and par rapport''. Her poems all differ from each other. When she writes poems, she never knows what she’s going to write next.

Synopsis
Alice Notley begins her novel with a short poem “After Wang Wei.” Here she writes in a style that you find throughout the rest of her novel, in which each line is hard to directly understand; however, the understanding of what the poem means is less significant in comparison to the ideas and themes intertwined throughout each poem. Although each poem does not directly relate to each other, there is this odd hidden connection. In her poems, she creates an environment almost, a setting, as to where the poem took place. For example, she mentions cities and city buildings.

She explores more about this novel during a discussion at Temple University in 2001 with Rachel Blau DuPlessis and class. This is a transcription from a part of the discussion when Notley mentions her novel ‘’’When I Was Alive’’’.

"“I learned about form from that, but I have a book called ‘’’When I Was Alive’’’ which is all forms. It’s nothing but forms. Well...It was published in 1980. I wrote the poems in 1977. I wasn’t trying to write forms. I, I just contradicted myself, but I did write forms by writing this. What I did, I took specific poems out of the past, this is largely what I did. I took specific poems out of the past, this is largely what I did, that I liked, and I made versions of them, writing syllable by syllable my own version, because I wanted to see if I could write the ways of the past, and so a great many of these poems are like that. There I see Michael Drayton.”"

From there she goes onto reading a few of her poems from ‘’’When I Was Alive”’: “The Song to All You City” and “You.” She continues on the conversation of form. Form, poetry-wise, is considered the structure of the poem including rhythms, system of rhymes and repetition, and the length of each line. Some of her poems use unique spacing and different repetitive patterns.

Influences
Alice Notley conceives experience as being poetry. Her writing and poems are just an accumulation of past experiences, in which reality is poetry. She found it difficult to separate poetry and living. Her poems in ‘’’When I Was Alive’’’ often revolved around people including her husband at the time, Ted Berrigan, her family, and her friends.