From 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. Divine Blue Light further
affirms Alexander's status as one of the most unique and innovative
voices in contemporary poetry.
One of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Notable Poetry Books for Fall
2022!
"Since the 1980s, the Los Angeles-based Alexander has mixed politics
with mesmeric, oracular lines."--The New York Times
Against 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. Divine Blue Light 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 & 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, Divine Blue Light confirms
Alexander's status among the foremost surrealists writing in English
today.
Praise for Divine Blue Light:
"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, Starred Review
"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."--Jenna Peng, The
Poetry Foundation
"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."--Maya Popa,
Publishers Weekly
"The 'invisible current' Will Alexander channels in the meteoric poems
of Divine Blue Light is not surreal escape but vibrational
engagement--an engagement with the infinite streams of the heart of
being."--Jeffrey Yang, author of Line and Light
"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. Divine Blue Light exists by what it
exudes."--Carlos Lara, author of Like Bismuth When I Enter
