A new collection of short prose writings in Will Alexander’s signature “vertical philosophy.”
The Coming Mental Range brings readers deep into the revolutionary poetics and philosophy of multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and musician Will Alexander. Gathering together a group of Alexander’s short prose writings in his signature “vertical philosophy” with essays in poetics touching on the work of admired artists and poets (Byron Baker, Wanda Coleman, Pablo JofrÈ, Bob Kaufman, and GhÈrasim Luca to name a few), in addition to several key interviews with the author, The Coming Mental Range serves as a critical introduction to Alexander’s work and thought, and as a companion to volumes in poetry and philosophy like Divine Blue Light (City Lights, 2022), Refractive Africa (New Directions, 2021), and Towards the Primeval Lightning Field (O Books, 1998). In The Coming Mental Range, “language crystallizes as imaginal blazing, as musical incandescence,” and we are swept along in its roaring tides to other shores. As Alexander writes, “What is most concerning language must never fail at convincing, at emancipating its readership via transgressive spiral.”
“As readers of Alexander’s writing have come to expect, it is swarming with information from a vast library — like one lost in Alexandria — that the author has absorbed into his bloodstream: philosophy; science of all kinds from color theory to the study of insects and lemurs; alchemy, geography; the Dogon; mining in Zimbabwe in 41,000 B.C.; science fiction; and the output of little-known writers. And really this is just the tip of the iceberg.”–John Yau
“The desire in such writing is for a paradise of language, for the creation in language of a reality that uses particles that ignite new constellations as they foment interlocking nonsequitur constellations that ignite new constellations as they burst.”–Clayton Eshleman
“Will Alexander is our alchemist. We are his raw materials.”–Andrei Codrescu
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Essay. Hybrid. Poetics. African & African American Studies.
