As Bob Dylan might have put it, crow is my cup of meat. Back on January 16, 2009 I put up a rambling post, toward the end of which I asked this question: “Whatever happened to Floyce Alexander, whose excellent poems I still read but whose voice—so intense and so distinctive—seems to have gone silent?” Well, as is often the case, it was I who had gone deaf; Floyce had been publishing (a bit sparingly, it’s true), but I had simply lost track of him. The good news is that now he has joined the poetic flotsam and jetsam (you and me, bucko) online. You can find him here, posting remarkable poems, bits of prose, reflections, dreams, enthusiasms and what-all. “I had no course but the hard way,” he writes in one of them, and don’t we know what he means? Well, I do. And I’m grateful to find him still alive and well and producing his quirky, beautiful, engagé (do they still say that?) forays into our personal and collective lives. You can even hear him doing it in his own voice here. What a gift!
Linda, I had not noticed your message until posting this on my facebook page. Thank you for your lovely, always taken-straight-to-the-heart words.
Yes, more good words for Floyce, who has an amazing recall of his very personal observations.
Thanks for the good words, Joseph, Conrad, and, as always, Lyle. The latter may be assured of a rousing response from Karenlee!–Floyce
I first read Floyce Alexander's poetry ca. 1971, a couple of months into my senior year of high school, in the poetry anthology <i>Quickly Aging Here</i> edited by Geof Hewitt. I found only a few of his poems over the years, a stray one here and there in an anthology or poetry magazine, then sometime in the late 1980's or the 1990's I started finding books of his as they came out. I&#
I've never met Floyce in the flesh, Conrad, but have felt close to him in the way readers feel a personal connection to writers, ever since reading his chapbook <i>Machete</i>. (I see Bob Arnold has a copy for sale at <a href="http://www.longhousepoetry.com/longhouse2010.html" rel="nofollow">Longhouse</a>!) It's one of the great gifts of the Web that it helps us restore lost connections..
Thanks for the Floyce Alexander link, Joseph.<br /><br />I like quirky, difficult and very very personal poetry.<br /><br />Pleasure to read.<br /><br />Conrad