By Mike Sonksen
FROM: Alta

Born in Los Angeles in 1948, poet Will Alexander has authored over 30 books for various independent presses, including City Lights and New Directions, and is considered one of the premier surrealist poets alive. His recent book Refractive Africa was short-listed for a Pulitzer and won the California Book Award for Poetry in 2022. His newest book, Divine Blue Light, is dedicated to John Coltrane, which makes poetic sense: Alexander uses language like Trane played his saxophone.

I’ve been talking to Alexander periodically for 15 years, and every time we speak, I’m enlightened by his stories and reflections. Divine Blue Light spotlights his intergalactic register especially through his extended meditation on Coltrane. Alexander says he started listening to the legendary saxophonist while he was in middle school, around 1961, and has never been the same since. “Listening to Trane gave me an instantaneous connection with realms that were unknown to me within the borders of the conscious mind,” Alexander says. “I was being spontaneously educated via realms which proved to be poetic praxis.”

Coltrane’s discography and that of kindred avant-garde players like Eric Dolphy helped Alexander forge his vocabulary and find his identity coming up in the wake of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s.

His poetic career began in the 1970s and has gradually picked up steam, especially in the past decade. For Alexander, though, it’s not about the awards or recognition. “It’s an ongoing repartee with the cosmos,” he says. A key line from his poem on Coltrane is instructive here: “you understood this to be in the infinity of your heart.” Read est of Artcle Here