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Christopher W. Alexander, Poet/Critic/Publisher Alexander's regular address is PO Box 522402, Salt Lake City, UT 84102; e.mail will reach him at calexand@library.utah.edu. Born 25 March 1970, in Akron, OH, he is espoused ("unofficially") to Linda V. Russo and is the father of one child. He works as a computer tech teacher. He has a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a master's from Boston University. Besides composing poetry, he writes cultural criticism and acts as a press collective co-ordinator--or "editor." He likes both classical and hardcore music (composers: bach, beethoven, schoengberg, shostakovich, ives, cage bands/musicians: The Minutemen, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus), film (derek jarman's The Garden & The Last of England), "politics" (Intifada, IRA, American domestic & foreign affairs), hiking, bicycling, painting & sculpture (Picasso, Diego Rivera, F. Kahlo, Duchamp). Among the books closest to him are The Brothers Karamazov and Berger's A Painter of Our Time; he is also high on the play, Woyzeck. He describes his religious outlook as "buddhist/none, marxist." He enjoys following pro basketball, "but only Chicago games & only occasionally." He practiced Tae Kwon Do for 10 yrs., & now lifts weights, jogs, goes on extended & day hikes, bicycles, cross-country skis, and occasionally goes snowshoeing. About his background in science and philosophy he says, "spent 2 yrs. of my undergrad studying genetics, got bored & moved over to american lit. I've read & do read a good deal of philosophy, particularly Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Wittgenstein, Derrida, the polit. philosophy of the Frankfurt School critics (esp. Adorno), Foucault, M. Bakhtin & V. Volosinov, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, etc. — focus on political & language phi." About his life-in-general, Alexander says, "complicated, but good overall. L. & I are relatively poor, but happy together, nominative press collective is taking off a bit, my poetic work is good if difficult." He had work in n/formation 1: spring 1997 and is currently viewable on the web at http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/). His book, Dusky Winders (nominative press collective, 1996) has been reviewed in Taproot Reviews. The contemporary poets important to him are Robert Creeley, Donald Revell, Charles Bernstein, Barrett Watten, Tina Darraugh, Peter Inman, Ron Silliman, Alan Halsey, Susan Howe, Peter Gizzi, David Bromige, Bruce Andrews and Susan Gevirtz. His favorites from the past are Zukofsky, Oppen, Williams, Stein, Spicer, Duncan and Apollinaire. Critis he deems important are Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno, M. Perloff, David James, Walter Benjamin, Michael Davidson, Barrett Watten, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Bruce Andrews, Steve Evans. In describing his tastes in poetry, Alexander says, "I respond most favorably to 'innovative' form, but not as 'pure' utterance interested in a poetics that reflects a commitment to leftist politics of some variety — not necessarily overtly (expository) but that raises questions of the epistemological variety. not interested in a 'liberatory politics of the signifier' or "pure music" any more than in naively content-driven verse." As a critic, he aims for "a reading of particular works in the context of their material conditions poetry as a reflection &/or criticism of its culture of origin." He tends to think of poetry "in terms of a Bourdieulian "field of poetic production", in which participants take positions that have meaning in relation to the field as a whole. we seem to suffer from a polarization @ this point — or rather not so much a polarization, which violates the spatial metaphor, but an antagonism — wherein some sectors of the field dominate in terms of monetary capital & recognition (by mass-market media organs) by virtue of the "accessibility" of their work (in terms of a middle-class view of art — largely affirmative of & comprehensible in terms of that class' pretensions to universality, e.g., conforming to "common sense", etc.). this is "light verse", even @ its most critical, because the criticism it lodges is always given in terms of the dominant, & so partially serves a recuperative function. 1positioned elsewhere in the field, & variably antagonistic but united by their lack of &/or distain for monetary capital are various "innovative" poetries. now, I'd say that, if one is concerned with the politicization of poetry, it's important to realize the value of "other" kinds of work, even if one still priviledges one mode. my chief interest is less in the antagonism between poetry communities than in possible critical-rhetorical strategies characterized by the whole of poetry as a genre, both "innovative" & "dominant" — despite the fact that, clearly, my tastes run to the former." He recommends the following for entries in the Comprepoetica Dictionary: Electronic Poetry Center (http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc), n/formation (http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/), UbuWeb, Fluxus Online, Poet's House (NYC), Misc. Proj. (Atlanta zine), Talisman (N.J. journal), Situation (D.C. zine), Impercipient Lecture Series (Providence, R.I. "journal"), Mirage/Period(ical) (S.F. zine), Mass. Ave. (Boston zine), lyric& (S.F. zine) and Antenym (S.F. zine). Click here to read "naldecon series," the sample of his work Alexander chose to have on display here.
Click here to read Joel
Kuszai's "Globigerina Ooze," Alexander's
choice of another contemporary poet's work he likes.
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