Bewildering Stories introduces and welcomes...

Alexander Etheridge

Alexander has been publishing poetry extensively for the past 24 years.

“Living Will” will challenge readers from the beginning to penetrate its world. What does “Will” mean in the title? Is it any clearer at the end than at the beginning? The lines “Hail five thousand years / of cellmates, family plots / and pottery dust” seem to situate the poem in all of human history. And “The library of Eden / willed to a blizzard of relapsing fever” might imply that mankind’s acquired sinfulness is a recurrent illness.

But can any reader ever complete an analysis of the poem? Surely all will agree that it stands as a fine example of hermetic poetry and a voice echoing from the time of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, when Symbolism was in full flower.

Alexander Etheridge’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Alexander. We’re looking forward to your other poems on the schedule.