Alphabet Noise

by Thomas Townsley

Alphabet Noise is an immersive experience, a croquembouche of crunchy predicates and polysemous jouissance. A wang dang doodle. A dynamo of “mad sleeping alphabets” galvanized by the noise of construction. Sparks flying. The blinding light of a welder creating a chassis of vocable transport. This is the noise of the poet as maker, the poet as innovator and explorer. The language is exuberant, amphibian and phantasmagoric. Intellect is endowed with puckish autonomy, a verbal acrobatics and jubilant excess which functions as an antidote against the toxins of those who would try to control and undermine the true merit of words, which is yet to be fully realized. This is the factory. This is the place where things get made. Hyper-objects. Philosophies. Le paradoxe de Mallarmé. “In the lit Palace of Nothing there are only voices.” -John Olson Author of numerous books of poetry and prose poetry and recipient of The Stranger’s 2004 Literature Genius Award. His seventh novel, Unfinished World, is forthcoming from Quale Press.

68 pages

Published September 2, 2025

About the author

Thomas Townsley grew up a minister's son in Central Pennsylvania, then moved to Syracuse, New York in 1979. He graduated from Syracuse University's Creative Writing graduate program in 1983, and, after a brief stint as a working musician in Florida's west coast, he returned to Upstate New York, where he has been a teacher, writer, blues musician, and artist. He currently teaches English, Creative Writing, and Art Appreciation at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, New York.

Reviews

[John Thomas Allen 2nd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Townsley has an uncanny ability to produce so many different sounds and varieties of diction
that one can't help but develop a fascination with his work, especially his collected works as compiled in one, "Alphabet Noise". This is gumbo that carefully constructs a map to an interior world which is beyond an immediate conception. The language enjoys itself in phrases which have a lexical onomatopeia--he reminds one of Gertrude Stein and with joy--but Townsley can also get fantastic and ethereal: "And the red ghosts drink names/Sirens in the fog promise salvation."

Townsley's work is not one note and simply comprised of multisyllabic words which are appealing visually or sonically. It is a compendium of an original voice, one that is sincere and is so much itself without being solipsistic. For anyone who wants an expansive and individuated experience.

[James Magrini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Townsley’s newest volume of poetry is undeniably one of his best offerings to date and testifies to Townsley’s status as an established and highly respected contemporary poet! Unlike some of his other collections, the poems comprising ‘Alphabet Noise’ are primarily what I would describe as ‘chapter poems,’ but the second section, “Famous Last Words” does contain some stand-alone poems.

For the most part, this book offers readers, despite their delicious absurdity and the outrageousness of much of Townsley’s neo-surrealistic visions, self-contained stories, i.e., bizarre, intriguing, thought-provoking (read: Mind-Bending!) vignettes – and here I purposefully refrain from applying the label, ‘narratives’.

Per usual, as expected from Townsley, readers are in the presence of a master of language who is deft at altering and twisting words in strange and creative ways, producing a multiplicity of unique voices and conscious altering moods. Several poems are reprints from literary and poetry journals, but the bulk of the collection is new and fresh.

This is stellar new book of poetry that will be well-received by both seasoned readers of Townsley and those coming to his work for the first time. I highly recommend this collection of poems. Reading ‘Alphabet Noise’ will undoubtedly inspire those who are unfamiliar with his work to enthusiastically seek out his other published collections.

I’ll conclude by turning to Townsley’s poetic prose to offer high praise for ‘Alphabet Noise’ – Townsley’s “poems radiate what the blurb writers call ‘revelatory beauty,’ ‘exceptional grace,’ valiant wit,’ ‘lyrical intensity,’ ‘unalloyed pleasure, ‘thunderous emotional resonance,’ ‘an ideal permanence,’ and ‘sheer good nature’.” – taken from the poem ‘Oof!’

James M. Magrini
Former: Philosophy/College of DuPage