For me, language, by its very operation, is alchemical, mesmeric, totalic in the way that it condenses and at the same time proves capable of leaping the boundaries of genre. Be it the drama, the poem, the essay, the novel, language operates at a level of concentration modulated by the necessity of the character or the circumstance which is speaking. My feeling is that language is capable of creating shifts in the human neural field, capable of transmuting behaviors and judgments. (W.A.)

A lifelong resident of Los Angeles, Alexander was till late in his career very little published, but his work has since opened up to assessments of his special and far-reaching view, like that, e.g., by Eliot Weinberger: “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 (and behind Césaire, Artaud, and Lautréamont). But he is also a poet whose ecstasy derives from scientific description of the stuff and the workings of the world.”