’Never Static’ -Will Alexander

’Never Static’ -Will Alexander https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/158991/never-static I request readers to read Jenna Peng’s interview of Will Alexander from the link above and then only my write-up. Thanks. I highlight some of his views on poetry below: 1.You’re living language, not pursuing language. You’re living it, and therefore, it has a way of growing so that maybe it springs out as a different form of a plant, rather than the way one thinks about growing a plant or a poem. 2.The Western mentality has been so delimited over time that people have been given this hardened education of delimit as expertise. It’s simply not there when you look at the human record. Those are the kinds of things I'm concerned with. 3.The West is, like E.M. Cioran said years ago, is not at the cusp; it’s in decline. It’s been in decline for some time. This is inevitable and the headlines seem to prove it. We're going into unknown dimensions that rationality can't contend with. As a poet, I need to understand that, not go along with it, but understand it as an opportunity to get into another space of consciousness. 4.This big star Arendelle that wasn’t supposed to be there in early stages of the universe was there already. Astronomy is taking up a lot of mindsets and different directions. Poetry should follow in that suit. There are numerous suns; there’s not only one sun. It's not only one kind of consciousness, one linear consciousness. The whole idea is getting into the foundational element of motion, the kaleidoscopic energy of the kinetic in language. Not dot your i’s and cross your t’s, but to get into the kinetic explosion of energy. We're talking about a combination of life. It’s part of a flow of being that we don't understand. Poetry, the exploration via poetry, allows answers to come to you. Not by means of any kind of explicit this or that, but because one feels the experiential nature of language. It’s not something that one could communicate like an answer, but it does give you a kind of illumination, that the sun begins to rise inside of oneself. That’s, at this moment, the best way I can speak about it. 5.I approach language as riverine. It dissolves all cataracts of consciousness, the cataracts are dissolved into a kind of alchemical empowerment. Honestly, I’m not overeducated. I haven’t set up all these resistances, these frameworks, these empowerments that can only be projected into a certain kind of space. 6.When I write poetry, I don't know what the next line is, what the next character is going to say. It unfolds like that across a whole range of activity. Will Alexander is well aware of the liberty the genre poetry offers. Language shuns its rigidity when a modern poem takes shape. A poem gives a whole new role to language. Without breaking the luxuries of prose, a poem cannot come out sharp and disturbing in minimum words. In the quotes 2 and 3 Will’s metaphysical thought process is evident. In his view a different level of consciousness and connect with the survival of the animate and inanimate outside the human domain. His visualization of a Sun rising within in his reply at 4 itself is like a poem. Besides metaphysics his macro vision on the celestial beings and connecting them to the life and people on earth is reflected in his poems. Like any other modern creator, in his reply 4 he clearly highlights a powerful poem opening the windows for creative reading. The reply 6 reveals to us the wonderful creativity of Will. Human race is tuned to materialistic success and supremacy of nations and enterprises and individuals as well. The attempt of a modern poet is to open their eyes both to the magical potential of liberation hidden in the stressful uncertain moments of human life. Uncertainty is always in the air, but we feel it when pushed to desperation. The wild life on earth and the planets far above, are tuned to a different rhythm which is in no way deviant from the hum of awareness of the interdependence of all creatures on one another. Even the inanimate survive and perish in tune with the life cycle sketched for each by the forces on and above earth beyond the purview of humans. A creator new to the genre poetry or a seasoned poet, both can draw a lot of inspiration and learn from Will Alexander.