Will Alexander has been prolific in his publications, having published 13 full-length works including: Vertical Rainbow Climber, The Stratospheric Canticles, Above the Human Nerve Domain, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome and Compression and Purity. There are very few of these 13 published works available online – not one its entirety. Alexander’s works are frequently published by small, independent presses, which – coupled with the difficulty of his work – maybe reason for the difficulty in acquiring his works. A few of Will Alexander’s works can be found and bought on standard sites like amazon.com or abeboks.com and some can also be bought from their respective publishers. The problem with accessing Alexander’s work comes when attempting to find individual works online. One would think it would be quite easy to find the work of a poet online who has been as prolific as Alexander and a poet who has had three books published in 2011 alone. Will Alexander’s work carries a tag of being “difficult,” which is the main reason his works are not distributed more widely.
In his essay, “The Difficult Poem’” Charles Bernstein states:
Difficult poems are not popular. This is something that any reader or writer of difficult poems must face squarely. There are no three ways about it. But just because a poem is not popular doesn’t mean it has no value! Unpopular poems can still have meaningful readings and, after all, may not always be unpopular. Even if the poem never becomes popular, it can still be special to you, the reader. Maybe the poem’s unpopularity will even bring you and the difficult poem closer. After all, your own ability to have an intimate relation with the poem in not affected by the poem’s popularity (Bernstein 150).
This difficulty and unpopularity describes Will Alexander’s work – according to the masses – but no matter the difficulty, Alexander’s work does have value. Its value lies in the fact that it is difficult, that it cannot definitively be classified, and that when read closely, poems of Will Alexander’s like, “Against the Temperature of Time & Corrosion” expands a reader’s lenses and literacy by challenging them. All of which readers of any level should be exposed to at some point in their literate lives.
My case for the more extensive inclusion of Will Alexander’s work especially in the medium of the internet begins with a case for his poem “Against the Temperature of Time & Corrosion.” The case I present for the inclusion of this particular poem is to be used as a microcosm for a more extensive inclusion of the entire body of Will Alexander’s work. I use this particular poem because it reads as a directive for encountering the work of Alexander, and illustrates the difficulties of reading his work. The opening stanza of Will Alexander’s, “Against the Temperature of Time & Corrosion” presents the initial encounter with a work of his and the representation of the language in place as the unfamiliar:
Living
beneath the murderous pressure
of time & corrosion
one is transfixed by glints
by a mirage
which fulminates diamonds
into greenish albino blackness (1-7)
The diamonds here are the words, words that we have encountered and read in one context or another, but in a Will Alexander poem these same words become unfamiliar because of their place. Will Alexander manipulates the words of a familiar language into a language entirely his own, which – because of context and the relationship with surrounding words – makes these words and language unfamiliar, curious and/or difficult. “Diamonds” have now become “greenish albino blackness.” The “murderous pressure” Alexander speaks to, is the pressure put on the poet, the poem, the reader, and language. There is a risk when writing and reading this type of poem – a risk in the form of this pressure. Will the pressure detract readership? Will the pressure cloud the language versus enhancing it? An alleviation of this pressure comes in the form of greater exposure. The exposure to this type of reading experience is important for a reader to see the limitlessness of language, to experience it in a peculiar light, which gives them tools for use in further reading. This exposure is doubly important for artists, who can expand their creative lenses through these same experiences. An artist can borrow from – and expand upon – the manipulation of language performed by Alexander, but must be exposed to it first. The work must be available for its importance to be discerned.
Will Alexander continues to anticipate the feelings of a reader as they encounter his work. He illustrates the frustration synonymous with reading his work in an extreme fashion:
in response
one becomes
fratricidal
hounding
tempestuous as a delta
with the ghosts of drowned cobras (27-32)
This stanza lends to the pressure placed on the poem to live up to a reading that will induce “fratricidal” and “tempestuous” feelings. But at the same time, giving a reader confidence if/when he or she does not encounter these feelings when he or she has grasped the poem without these heightened levels of frustration. A certain level of engagement with a difficult poem will enhance not only the poem at hand, but also all poems read after. Because of the engagement needed to read a poem like “Against the Temperature of Time & Corrosion.” A reader will apply – or at least have the ability to apply – a high level of engagement to all readings. This tool can only be revealed to a reader’s self when attempting to read poems like Will Alexander’s closely.
“Against the Temperature of Time & Corrosion” is a poem that must be read closely. The poets play with language and imagery will be missed without a close read. The ideas put forth – like the “Newtonian labour for bread” – will be misread, or rather read versus being seen without a close read. Exposure to this Will Alexander poem is the basis for my case for Will Alexander. With just mere exposure there’s expansion. Expansion of: lens, literacy, ideas, limits on language and limits on poetry and art. There are not many artists like Will Alexander producing work today and more exposure to his work will help the reader “so that one floats by suspension / imbibing the force / of interminate comets & hail” (Alexander 99-101).
Works Cited
Alexander, Will. The Stratospheric Canticles. Berkeley: Pantograph Press, 1995.
Bernstein, Charles. "The Difficult Poem." Retallack, Joan and Juliana Spahr. Poetry and Pedagogy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 148-150.
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