Aunonomic Reasoning by Will Alexander

Precipitous philosophies. Synaptic-nerve narrations. Syntactic spirals. Hyper-coiled horizons. Will Alexander’s mental range has arrived. An anomalous scripting of the word “automatic,” Aunonomic Reasoning is a whirlwind of lingual torrents triggered by creative mishearing that at once exposes the occupations of orthodox surrealism, summons a voice for the scathed populace of imperial affliction, and forges new paths of phonetic potentiality to mend semantic injury. Pushing prosaic margins beyond their boundaries, these texts take on the etymological condition of the essay as “attempt” with iridescent siege, prepositional frenzy, paratactic provocation, noetic disreckoning, and a critical demand to dismantle: all of which signatures of Alexander’s unilateral poetic innovations.

Praise for Aunonomic Reasoning

“Will Alexander’s ranging intelligence is on full display in Aunonomic Reasoning, a book of ravishing essays that liberate thinking, being, and meanings in their proliferative urgency. Here is an ontological ethical tract for life on this precarious planet. Predatory projections and all shibboleths of the nihilist death cult—the imperial-industrial-military complex—are blasted into smithereens of energy, releasing and regrouping as an emergent spectrum of enlightenment as is Alexander’s vision. This book, of the highest acumen, is of paramount importance for the spells it casts, for the decolonial guide it is, for the sheer life force it extends to all comrades in fortified kinship.”

—Brenda Iijima, author of Presence

Will Alexander is a poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher, visual artist, and musician. He has published over forty books in a variety of genres and has earned many honors and awards including a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, and the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize. He has also exhibited his artwork in group and solo shows. His publications include Charismatic Spirals (ISOLARII, 2024), The Coming Mental Range (Litmus Press, 2023), Refractive Africa (New Directions, 2021/Granta, 2022), which was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Divine Blue Light (City Lights, 2022), The Combustion Cycle (Roof Books, 2021), Across the Vapor Gulf (New Directions, 2017), and The Sri Lankan Loxodrome (New Directions, 2009). He is currently the poet-in-residence at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California and has lived his entire life in Los Angeles.

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