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Today's poem is "Koi Pond in Slow Motion"
from Still Life

White Pine Press

Alexander Long is a poet, teacher, book reviewer, essayist, and musician. VIGIL, his first book of poems, was released in 2006 from the New Issues Press Poetry Series. Co-editor of A Condition of the Spirit: the Life & Work of Larry Levis (Eastern Washington UP, 2004), Long is also the author of a memoir, Noise (RockWay Press, 2007), and a chapbook, Six Prose Poems (Brandenburg Press, 2004). His poems, essays, and book reviews have been published in American Writers (Charles Scribner's Sons), Blackbird, QUARTERLY WEST, The Prose Poem: an International Journal, Third Coast, Rivendell, and elsewhere. Currently he is a member of the writing faculty at West Chester University, and writes, plays, and tours with the band Redhead Betty Takeout.

Books by Alexander Long:

Other poems on the web by Alexander Long:
Two poems
Two poems
Three poems
"Style in Slow Motion"
"On Awe"
"Lunch with Larry"

Alexander Long's Home Page.

About Still Life:

"There is nothing 'still' in the remarkably visceral poems of Alexander Long’s third collection, Still Life, and nothing is at rest in these restless and edgy poems. Conversational and kinetic, these poems chart the traces left by the shifting overlays of the templates of literature, rock-and-roll, and contemporary culture. As each poem in Still Life attempts to fix a focus upon a scene or subject, the protean natures under view draw the poet into the eddies and complexities of reflection. This is a powerful and moving collection of poems."
—David St. John

"As Alexander Long writes in his remarkable new book, 'Listen to history . . . It can’t happen fast enough.' This poet has forged a style which manages to seize history on the wing, even the history we think has past and gone, and set it before us on the page. Agile, prehensile, narrative and aphoristic, these are the poems of a lively and engaged intellect and imagination and they express much of what is best in our poetry today."
—Mark Jarman

"One of Still Life's many achievements is it's paradoxical mix of intensity and stillness. Alexander Long's visions of landscape, identity and 'History itself, a joke that no one gets' are simultaneously meditative and alert, restless and focused. This is a smart, compassionate poet. Still Life is a mesmerizing new book."
—Terrance Hayes



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