Exobiology as Goddess

by Will Alexander

Poetry. African American Studies. This book of poetry by accomplished artist, novelist, playwright, and poet Will Alexander uses the language of science to address spiritual and personal revelations. Praising the figure "Solea," EXOBIOLOGY AS GODDESS is a love poem written in the specifics of the natural world.

"William Blake merges with Sun Ra in the ecstatic flicker of evanescent transience. This work blazes with an holographic imaginary that is our only defense against the Dark."—Charles Bernstein

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published February 1, 2005

About the author

Born in 1948, Will Alexander is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, visual artist and pianist. He was the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002. He was also the subject of a colloquium published in the prestigious African American cultural journal, Callaloo in 1999. Author of nine previous books, Alexander has taught at various colleges including University of California, San Diego, New College (San Francisco, CA), Hofstra University, and Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, in addition to being associated with the nonprofit organization Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, serving at-risk youth. He is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much good language in here - fluid from pillaged mongoose seeds, death by perpetual optic, etc etc. a poet of the highest order.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I overheard Will Alexander read one night, looked up at the sky, and wondered what had landed.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If wondering where to begin your own song to the mother of being, here is a manual....

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times when I read Will Alexander I find I’m grinding the letters of his words down, between my teeth, mano a metate, trying to make a meal, only to discover there’s nothing in the stone depression but sand, microscopically beautiful of course but inedible.
The food is the goddess Solea, scattered throughout this text, and she is there for the taking once the reader surrenders to the moment in the lines, allows the university of chemistry and prophecy to soak in.
I like to call this book his work on the extraterrestrial Gaia, who also happens to be our goddess with the same physics and chemistry as we have on earth, and this is his arkestra with its solar flares, a heat so rich I often can only digest this in very small bits as Alexander bend space and time with his double adjectived nouns, with his excursion into the senses, with his commitment to the multifarious design of Solea. Metaphors mix in a swirling alchemical batch that justify a worship committed to being in flight, a soaring because this concatenation of flavors and dreams is a spiritual commitment to the ongoing struggle to accept and explain the chaotic and seemingly inexplicable love that the elements our universe contain, that can only be explained linguistically through the sudden eruptions from silence, the unsaid or the unsayable, the glorious mating of the incongruous with the impossible.
There is a poetic prophetic tradition on the West Coast and the two best representatives are Michael McClure and Will Alexander. I say this because of their voices. In very different ways they say something similar, using word that range beyond the normal ken of understanding. They both stand in the wilderness because the very stuff we are made of and their concern for the earth ranges through them and beyond them to encompass the universe. There are differences, of course, great differences. But their voices are brave beyond the common measure, and are always willing to play dice with the universe and show their love for it.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sheer extravagance of Alexander's poetry, which I found to be some of the most rewarding if difficult contemporary poetry I have encountered, leads to a brilliantly slow reading, reveling in the images he fashions from oddly juxtaposed words and a multitude of traditions and frameworks. His work is not to be taken lightly, not to be read quickly, but work to be pondered, analyzed, deconstructed, and reaffirmed. Though by no means an "easy read," Alexander's poetry rewards the careful reader with a sense that one's world will not be the same for having read his luscious, baroque poems. The intense care and intentionality behind his words easily comes to the foreground as individual words open up narratives which resonate between the dynamic reader and the attentive audience. Drawing from astrophysics, world myths, global cultures, and metaphysics, the poems create a vision of the world as intrinsically connected and a deeply spiritual place.