Islands And Men by C. Alexander

“What does it say about us/ that solitary confinement drives us/ insane?” In islands And men Caleb Alexander explores our relationship with the world and each other. Often questions like this spark the inquiry. Then pithy diction speaks bold truth: “Most of time/ we are not here” —“There’s more not than is”—“Paint a smile on your scars.”

Wordplay makes this an amusing read. You will laugh. Often.  “I can’t find myself sometimes/ but you always seem to,/ and always seem too.” His images are sharp, visual, fresh, irreverent: “our parents walked upright/ like Godzilla while we hid/ behind skyscrapers/ like a tan loveseat”—“Rorschach blot of Freudian naughtiness”—“long-fought 22 minute battle/ with lung cancer.” There’s dry self-deprecation about our questioning “so we can live a little longer,/ keep asking questions, believing/ there is poetry/hidden in the answers.” He bares the humor of intimacy “in an awkward embrace that feels/like lying in your driveway and discussing/YA literature like it’s Hemingway.”

Alexander crafts with skill, most notable in “Dust” where the S sound in combined alliteration and consonance makes the entire poem hiss. His homage to Muses applies synecdoche masterfully: “out of my hands/ your lips and tongue fly.” The unique closing, prose fiction, depicts Carl, a decomposing yet somehow active corpse; in it, Alexander applies a motif of the malodor Carl increasingly exudes to explore our connections to death and each other. The images at the end stick. Thus Alexander delights, start to finish.

–Elizabeth Robin, Where Green Meets Blue (2018), Silk Purses and Lemonade (2017)

“A impressive exploration that weaves through the fantastical while grounded in the harsh realism we live in every day. Whether your head is in the clouds or your feet on the ground, this collection steals your attention from the first to last word.”

–Olivia Dolphin, founder and editor-in-chief of Wizards in Space Literary Magazine