Towards the Primeval Lightning Field

Book excerpt: Poetry. African American Studies. Philosophy. Essays. Now available as a second edition with a new preface from the author, Will Alexander's TOWARDS THE PRIMEVAL LIGHTNING FIELD (O Books, 1998) is a work of vertical philosophy revealing the strata of cultures and language, like geographical layers seen all at once. These essays comprise Alexander's search for origins outside the warrens of the visible, revealing a singular imagination that moves with the force of a manifesto and the impossible dexterity of the unknown. Described by Eliot Weinberger as probably the only African-American poet to take Aimé Cesaire as a spiritual father, Alexander's singular voice resonates far past the constrictions of the rational world. His work resembles no one's and is instantly recognizable. In part, he is an ecstatic surrealist on imaginal hyperdrive. He is probably the only African-American poet to take Aimé Césaire as a spiritual father...[Alexander] is a poet whose ecstasy derives from the scientific description of the stuff and the workings of the world.--Eliot Weinberger Will Alexander is by far the most original poet working in the United States today. A major force in the dissemination of surrealism, there is absolutely no one who sounds like Alexander, and he, most emphatically sounds like no one else.--Justin Desmangles If the quotidian amounts to little more than a dossier of unitary suffering, then Will Alexander's visionary essays commence the ignition of evolution beyond inclemency. Césaire, Lorca, Cheikh Anta Diop, non-European philosophy and cosmology, alchemical and anti-statist traditions: all animate this work; its range is incomparable. André Breton wrote that for surrealism 'life is elsewhere;' TOWARDS RGE PRIMEVAL LIGHTNING FIELD takes us in pleasure and terror along the way to that range, shimmering beyond grim power, 'where the waters and suns are both kindled by splendour.'--Barry Maxwell