Alice Notley is an American poet once described by the artist Rudy Burckhardt as “our present-day Homer.” She is the author of over forty books of poetry, most recently From the Beginning (The Owl Press), Alma, or the Dead Women (Granary Books), Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 (Wesleyan University Press), which received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, In the Pines (Penguin Publishing Group), Culture of One (Penguin Poets), Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (also Wesleyan University Press), Benediction (Chax Press), and Certain Magical Acts (also Penguin Poets).