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The Sri Lankan Loxodrome
the maps one comes to know
are but boulders which are shattered by spoilage
--Will Alexander
In navigation a loxodrome, or rhumb-line, is a line that crosses all meridians at the same angle, maintaining one compass direction, a path of constant bearing. In his breakthrough poetry collection, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, Will Alexander connects this theme to a lone Sri Lankan sailor who beheads sea snakes as an ongoing meditation while sailing the expanse of the Indian Ocean. Along the way he meets various African communities as he journeys eastward, from Madagascar to Sri Lanka. In lush, perfumed language filled with the spirit of Aimé Césaire and Sun Ra, Alexander maps an epic voyage unlike any other in contemporary poetry.
are but boulders which are shattered by spoilage
--Will Alexander
In navigation a loxodrome, or rhumb-line, is a line that crosses all meridians at the same angle, maintaining one compass direction, a path of constant bearing. In his breakthrough poetry collection, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, Will Alexander connects this theme to a lone Sri Lankan sailor who beheads sea snakes as an ongoing meditation while sailing the expanse of the Indian Ocean. Along the way he meets various African communities as he journeys eastward, from Madagascar to Sri Lanka. In lush, perfumed language filled with the spirit of Aimé Césaire and Sun Ra, Alexander maps an epic voyage unlike any other in contemporary poetry.
Book Details
- Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Publish Date: Sep 29th, 2009
- Pages: 112
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.94in - 6.08in - 0.36in - 0.39lb
- EAN: 9780811218290
- Categories: • American - General
About the Author
Alexander, Will: - A poet, aphorist, playwright, essayist, philosopher, visual artist, and pianist Will Alexander is a native of Los Angeles. The author of nearly thirty books, his honors include a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, and the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize. He is currently the poet-in-residence at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California.
Praise for this book
Alexander's poems are unpunctuated, their expanding structures suggest that each might be read as a single very long, very complex sentence...a complex sentence machine turning out elaborate grammatical parallelisms, extensive series of epic catalogues, and open-ended syntax of discordant clauses and appended prepositional phrases.--HarRyette Mullen "Callaloo"
Alexander's verbal flights strike me as more shamanistic than free-associational or automatic. His evocation of upper and lower worlds, and his vocabulary which bridges poetry, philosophy, myth, and science, give his verbal fulgurations a sense of linguistic seed that suddenly sprouts, then resprouts.... He may be the first major 'outsider artist' in American poetry. Whatever he is, he is a force to reckon with, whose self-propelled soarings evoke Simon Rodia's 'Watt's Tower' as well as Siberian ecstasies.--Clayton Eshleman "American Poet"
Formidable. Alexander encourages the reader to ... let the poem itself exist as its own unique world.--Andrew Wessels "The Quarterly Conversation"
An unusual poet who likes unusual word...these poems look fresh and alien.--Jesse Tangen-Mills "Times Literary Supplement"