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Alexander Long (b. 1972) is an American poet. His books include Vigil (New Issues Poetry & Prize, Western Michigan University Press, 2006), Light Here, Light There (C & R Press, 2009), and Still Life (White Pine Press, 2011, Prize Winner). Long is also author author of four chapbooks, The Widening Spell (Q Avenue Press, 2016), Lunch with Larry (Q Avenue Press, 2014), Still Life (Center for Book Arts Competition, 2010, Prize Winner), and Six Prose Poems (Brandenberg Press, 2004). Long is co-editor, with American poet Christopher Buckley), of A Condition of the Spirit: the Life and Work of Larry Levis (Eastern Washington University Press, 2004).

On A Condition of the Spirit: the Life and Work of Larry Levis: The untimely death of Larry Levis in 1996 left the world of American poetry stunned and dismayed. His work was of such depth and such amazing resonance, that it was admired and studied by an entire generation of poets and readers, regardless of esthetic or cultural predispositions. Levis's poems crossed borders, broke down barriers, and invited a sharing of the strange, sweet loneliness of being that is the fundamental human lot. A Condition of the Spirit brings together reviews, essays, interviews, and mediations by more than forty American poets profoundly affected by Levis's life and work. But that's not all: the book also contains twelve previously uncollected essays by Levis himself, making it a handbook for the study of the poet's thinking on the craft of poetry and the craft of life. Contributors to the collection include Philip Levine, Charles Wright, Diane Wakoski, Stephen Dunn, David St. John, Peter Everwine, Dave Smith, Stephen Sandy, Nancy Eimers, Peter Stitt, David Wojahn, Paul Zimmer, Sandra Gilbert, David Young, and Gerald Stern.

On Vigil: "Alexander Long has subject, and with honed and original craft, this makes for voice, makes for poems we can believe and care about, enter and learn a little more of what it means to be human, to be here...Long knows about the surface of poems, how to keep them fresh in syntax even though there is a story to be told, a part of life to be examined. He is never writing to the trend. Yet, you will hear an original rhythm, and where appropriate, like a jazz musician, you will hear homage, a riff quoted from a master. His work is mature; he has something to write about; it's soul making"--Christopher Buckley.

On Light Here, Light There: "The poems in Alexander Long's Light Here, Light There offer no bromides, no easy consolations. His new book is a product of 'the grieving mind in memory,' and Long seems to have forgotten nothing. The misery of a failed marriage, a friend's suicide, and the casual ruin of other wasted lives are cataloged with a ruthless precision. But 'every apocalypse is personal,' Long assures us, and because it is, we readers experience the same redemption that Long somehow manages to coax out of the relentless assault of the past. Alexander Long's poems are superbly lyrical, agile and flamboyant. His description of Jimi Hendrix in one of his poems is an apt description of Long as well: 'wicked and bright and on'"--Gary Young.

On 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