Above the Human Nerve Domain

by Will Alexander, David Baratier (Editor)

Poetry. African American Studies. "The domain of poet Will Alexander's nervy curiosity ranges from the icy Himalayas, to African savannahs, from physics, astronomy, and music, to alchemy, philosophy, and painting. Orishas, angels and ghosts all sing to this poet, instructing him in their art of verbal flight. This is a poet whose lexicon, a 'glossary of vertigo, ' might be culled from the complete holdings of a reconstituted Alexandrian library endowed for the next millenium" Harryette Mullen."

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

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

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book of American surrealist outer space poetry written by a student of Bob Kaufman's and Phillip Lamantia. With pieces about Telepathic Carnivores, holographic ballerinas, and Post-sociocratic Biology, this is for a reader that is looking for a new trip into the interior of being.

Here is the first poem from _Above the Human Nerve Domain_ by Will Alexander, Pavement Saw Press, 1998. One note, all of the unusual words in the poem are actual words not author creations.


-------------------
The Impalpable Brush Fire Singer

No
he is not an urn singer
nor does he carry on rapport
with negative forces within extinction

he is the brush fire singer
who projects from his heart
the sound of insidious subduction
of blank anomaly as posture
of opaque density as ash

he
distanced from prone ventriloqual stammer
from flesh
& habit
& drought

the performer
part poltergeist & Orisha
part broken in-cellular dove
part glance from floating Mongol bastions

where the spires are butane
where their photographic fractals are implanted with hypnosis

because he allegedly embodies
a green necrotic umber
more like a vertical flash or a farad
posing like a tempest in a human chromium palace

therefore his sound
a dazed simoom in a gauntlet
a blizzard of birds burned at the touch of old maelstroms

because he gives off the odour of storms
this universal Orisha
like a sun that falls from a compost of dimness
out of de-productive hydrogen sums
out of lightless fissures which boil outside the planet

yes
he sings at a certain pitch
which has evolved beyond the potter's field
beyond a tragic hummingbird's cirrhosis
surmounting primeval flaw
surmounting fire which forms in irreplaceable disjunction

under certain formations of the zodiac he is listless
he intones without impact
his synodic revelations no longer of the law
of measured palpable destinations
because he sings in such a silence
that even the Rishis can't ignore

as though
the hollow power which re-arises from nothingness
perpetually convinces
like a vacuum which splits within the spinning arc of an
intangile solar candle

such power can never be confusedly re-traced
because
it adumbrates & blazes
like a glossary of suns
so that each viral drill
each forge
casts a feeling
which in-saturates a pressure
bringing to distance a hidden & elided polarity

like a subjective skill
corroded & advanced
he sings
beyond the grip of a paralytic nexus
where blood shifts
beyond the magnet of volume
where the nerves no longer resonate
inside an octagonal maze
stung at its source by piranhas

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loaned this book out a while ago and never got it back

I am a HUGE Will Alexander fan, as a person, poet, now novelist, playwright, visual artist; my introduction to him was this book.

Clayton Eshleman, arguably an earlier influence than Kaufman and Lamantia. I heard him read with Lamantia. Great, great stuff.

I highly recommend any courses or lectures Will delivers as well.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers may and should take the turn at once sober and sidereal through the miracle of Will Alexander's lexicality.

[Stella Gleitsman · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely wacky use of language, words mixed together in ways never dreamed possible, he gets me.

Poetic assonance/consonance, cadence/sound in general is not something to skimp out on in poetry and he does it so well here everyone else should give up.


how are you gonna put together “black amnesial gauntlet” and “strange unalterable monkshood” love it

[Jesse Boring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book is nearly perfect & countless allusions that makes this very unpredictable. Great fun. Have a dictionary ready.