{"title":"Books by Will Alexander","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780578084459","title":"Mirach Speaks To His Grammatical Transparents","description":"Mirach Speaks To His Grammatical Transparents is a philosophical meditation vertically scripted. It is an extension of Alexander's first book in this mode, Towards The Primeval Lightning Field. Both books in concert, exist as a double exploration, in what, for the author, is a nascent odyssey, concerning the mind at non-limit through cellular transmogrification.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56293159666037,"sku":"9780578084459","price":6.51,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780578084459_e8f46591-1361-4cda-9dc2-7e0d25fca4bc.jpg?v=1786014792"},{"product_id":"9780872868700","title":"Divine Blue Light for John Coltrane","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Will Alexander, finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, a new collection of poems from the intersection between surrealism and afro-futurism, where Césaire meets Sun Ra. \u003ci\u003eDivine Blue Light\u003c\/i\u003e further affirms Alexander’s status as one of the most unique and innovative voices in contemporary poetry.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Notable Poetry Books for Fall 2022!\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Since the 1980s, the Los Angeles-based Alexander has mixed politics with mesmeric, oracular lines.”—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAgainst the ruins of a contemporary globalist discourse, which he denounces as a “lingual theocracy of super-imposed rationality,” Will Alexander’s poems constitute an alternative cartography that draws upon omnivorous reading—in subjects from biology to astronomy to history to philosophy—amalgamating their diverse vocabularies into an impossible instrument only he can play. \u003ci\u003eDivine Blue Light\u003c\/i\u003e is anchored by three major works: the opening “Condoned to Disappearance,” a meditation on the heteronymic exploits of Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa; the closing “Imprecation as Mirage,” a poem channeling an Indonesian man; and the title poem, an anthemic ode to the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Other key pieces include “Accessing Gertrude Bell,” a critique of one of the designers of the modern state of Iraq; “Deficits: Chaïm Soutine \u0026amp; Joan Miró,” in homage to two Jewish artists forced to flee the Nazi invasion of France; and “According to Stellar Scale,” a compact lyric that traveled to space with astronaut Sian Proctor. The newest installment in our Pocket Poets Series, \u003ci\u003eDivine Blue Light \u003c\/i\u003econfirms Alexander’s status among the foremost surrealists writing in English today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eDivine Blue Light\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Adopting a surrealist approach to making sense of the universe, Alexander plumbs language for its limits, often with dazzling results....Pondering the mysteries of existence and artistic influence, this engrossing work turns the quest for self-knowledge into a choral act.\"—Publishers Weekly, \u003ci\u003eStarred Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Alexander’s range—which moves past the propriety of each subject to the expansiveness of every—can be approximated as Aimé Césaire’s totality of the lion, or form and emptiness, or appositional, apparitional Black being. And this being is most real and realized through the collection’s quantum mechanics and dynamics, which Alexander invokes astrophysically, evokes metaphysically.\"\u003cb\u003e—Jenna Peng, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Poetry Foundation\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"These surrealist and Afrofuturist poems examine politics, globalism, and the powers and limitations of language, while paying tribute to artists forced to flee the Nazi invasion of France.”—\u003cb\u003eMaya Popa, \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The 'invisible current' Will Alexander channels in the meteoric poems of \u003ci\u003eDivine Blue Light\u003c\/i\u003e is not surreal escape but vibrational engagement—an engagement with the infinite streams of the heart of being.\"—\u003cb\u003eJeffrey Yang\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eLine and Light\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Like agua tilting itself into a god, Will’s texts suffuse the horizon of Poetry with the abstract purity of their oceanic movements, sun-condensing, dissolving seemingly endless sight into a disappearing instant of the Miraculous. \u003ci\u003eDivine Blue Light\u003c\/i\u003e exists by what it exudes.\"—\u003cb\u003eCarlos Lara, \u003c\/b\u003eauthor of \u003ci\u003eLike Bismuth When I Enter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56295365181813,"sku":"9780872868700","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780872868700_3e1c19f7-4224-4db3-8bbe-ba27a7f5a76b.jpg?v=1786016210"},{"product_id":"9781783788309","title":"Refractive Africa","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY \u003c\/b\u003e   \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Poetry Book Society Recommendation\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRefractive\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e Africa\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e is a set of three poems ruminating on diasporic witness, colonialism, invasion, and political resistance. This 'pas de trois' of poems begins paying homage to Amos Tutuola, innovative Nigerian-Yoruban author, and ends with a speech towards modernist Malagasy poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe collection turns around the long middle poem, using the geographical site of the Congo river as a lens for considering the pillaging and dislocation of societies through history, honing-in on the specific colonial and post-colonial histories of the area. He welds these to contemporary instances of ecological damage through mining for tin and cobalt.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFierce, compelling, and full of astrological reckoning, this book is a 'savage enunciation':\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 'this is the Congo  \u003cbr\u003evertiginous with derangement  \u003cbr\u003ewith its foul \u0026amp; delimited hygiene  \u003cbr\u003ewith its \"weaver bird nests\"  \u003cbr\u003ewith its sprawling grasslands  \u003cbr\u003ewith its \"ghostly voltage\" as flares from old oil rigs  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethus our intelligence forcibly blunted  \u003cbr\u003eour thought stream injured as culpable integument  \u003cbr\u003ewithin this compound negation  \u003cbr\u003eterror persists  \u003cbr\u003esnaking its way through interior suppression'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303929164149,"sku":"9781783788309","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781783788309_aabb8f23-35a7-43a4-b822-2c8b9acab40b.jpg?v=1786025522"},{"product_id":"call-me-jonah","title":"Call Me Jonah","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492466172277,"sku":"9781950639205","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781950639205.jpg?v=1786529317"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-will-alexander.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}