Poetry. "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.

Author City: HOBOKEN, NJ USA

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. In 2011, Long was named the winner of the sixteenth annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize for his collection STILL LIFE (White Pine Press, 2011).