Beyond baroque poet-in-residence will alexander

 

Beyond Baroque Poet-in-Residence, Will Alexander is a true alchemical beat poet. A lifetime resident of Los Angeles, California, Alexander earned his BA in English and Creative Writing from University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He has taught at The Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics, (Boulder, CO), and been writer in residence at UC San Diego, New College (SF, CA), and Hofstra University (Hempstead, NY). Will Alexander is the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry (2001) and a California Arts Council Fellowship (2002). More recently Will received the American Book Award for Poetry in 2014 and the Jackson Prize in 2016. He was the subject of a colloquium in the African American Journal Callaloo (1999). Alexander's ecumenical style of creative delivery, penchant for English spelling, appreciation for African American culture, neologisms and arcane erudition mark him as a unique voice among literary cartographers.

As a poet, novelist, visual artist, pianist, playwright and philosopher, Alexander is continually pushing the boundaries of expression. His influences include Bob Kaufman, Octavio Paz, Aimé Césaire, Philip Lamantia and Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo. Alexander first published Asia & Haiti (1995), to considerable acclaim, as novelist John Olson notes, "It is a poem with a surrealistic aperture, oracular lens and Delphic tripod."

With respect to his work in Towards the Primeval Lightning Field (1998), esteemed poetic translator Clayton Eshleman notes, "The desire in such writing is for a paradise of language, for the creation, in language, of a reality that uses particles from the observational world to foment interlocking non sequitur constellations that ignite new constellations as they burst." Alexander's words erupt on the page like the collision of extragalactic neutron stars. They seek, in his own language, an "alchemical metamorphosis."

Will Alexander's poetic altitude moves like a herd of wild horses, it gallops, letters stand to his attention. Of Above The Human Nerve Domain (1998), professor of English at UCLA, Haryette Mullen, declares, "This is a poet whose lexicon, a 'glossary of vertigo', might be culled from the complete holdings of a reconstituted Alexandrian Library endowed for the next millennium."

Perhaps this brief excerpt from Alexander's work, On The Liberation of Angels (Callaloo, 1999) can speak to those volumes:

"We are flying to these brimstone mountains to poetically liberate angels, to open up a new invisible vulcanism, so as to restore to their powers the fruit of perpendicular voltage, to restore to their substance a cosmic Pantaraxia, which will alchemically accrue incident after hypnotic incident."

"Again, our declaration being concerned with the voltage of angels, with their volts of obscure spectrums, because, to respirate at such strenuous pitch we must continue to mine from our forces inclement labyrinths, to cull from our depths seeming sigils of failure, thereby allowing us entry through shafts of invisible nephology" (Ibis).

Will Alexander continues to merge literary genres. He published a novel Diary as Sin (2011), a collection of shorts, Inside The Earthquake Palace (2011), and philosophical essays, Mirach Speaks to his Grammatical Transparents (2011). He is currently a member of the Curators Council at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation in Los Angeles, California and was appointed Beyond Baroque's Poet in Residence in 2011.

Books by Will Alexander

Vertical Rainbow Climber. Jazz Press, 1987. Archane Lavender Morals. Leave Books, 1994. The Stratospheric Canticles. Pantograph Press, 1995. ISBN 1-880766-08-6 Asia & Haiti. Sun & Moon Press, 1995. ISBN 1-55713-189-9 Above the Human Nerve Domain. Pavement Saw Press, 1998. ISBN 1-886350-81-7 Towards the Primeval Lightning Field. O Books, 1998. ISBN 1-882022-30-0 Exobiology as Goddess. Manifest Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-9673885-8-8 Sunrise In Armageddon. Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1-933132-17-4 Inalienable Recognitions. Tract Series #4. eohippus labs, 2009. The Sri Lankan Loxodrome. New Directions Publishing, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8112-1829-0 On the Substance of Disorder. [Parrot 7]. Insert Press, 2010. Compression & Purity. City Lights, 2011. ISBN 978-0-87286-541-9 Diary As Sin. Skylight Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-908011-13-8 Inside the Earthquake Palace: 4 Plays. Chax Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-925904-89-8 Mirach Speaks to his Grammatical Transparents. Oyster Moon Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-578-08445-9 The Brimstone Boat - For Philip Lamantia. Rêve à Deux, 2012. ISBN 978-0-578-09589-9 Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose Texts, Interviews and a Lecture 1991-2007. Essay Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9791189-7-5 Kaleidoscopic Omniscience: Asia & Haiti/ The Stratospheric Canticles/ Impulse & Nothingness. Skylight Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-908011-49-7 The Transparent as Witness. Will Alexander & Janice Lee. Solar Luxuriance, 2013. Towards the Primeval Lightning Field. Litmus Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-933959-20-7 The Codex Mirror: 60 Drawings by Byron Baker & 60 Writings by Will Alexander. Anon Edition, 2015. ISBN 978-1-312620-47-6 Based on the Bush of Ghosts. Staging Ground, 2015.