Will Alexander

I was in New York recently reading at the Bowery and at Rutgers University. I met a deep brother from LA there, a spellbinding and radical poet called Will Alexander. Radical in the sense that his work challenges the reader in a way not often encountered. It creates its own self sufficient universe, what my friend James Oscar used to call 'the metaphysics of another world', a world in which the nomenclature of scientific fact and poetic possibility and resonance co-exist within the same strope. It is a difficult work which in places reminds me of some of Nathaniel Mackey's work - 'Splay Anthem' - it does not give up its secrets easily, yet anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Brother Will from Los Angeles, his poetics bringing to mind what Mingus said about Raashan Roland Kirk, that those who think he's all about a gimmick should just listen to him with their eyes closed. And this, reference to Alexanders' Canticles, with the back cover blur by Eliot Weinberger who says 'His erudition and vocabulary, like MacDiarmid's are vast:read Alexander with a dictionary and you'll see how precise he is.'

yes

poetics

its force

jettisoned by "hypotaxis"

by...paratactic co-ordination

& fire

From Will Alexander's The Stratospheric Canticles.