Charles Alexander
American, b.1954; MA (English) 1978
Lives and works in Tucson, Arizona
Illustrations by Cynthia Miller, Yaqui songs recorded, translated, and annotated by Larry Evers and Felipe S. Molina
Letterpress and relief printed from pen and ink drawings
Chax Press, Tucson, Arizona
Edition of 100
Courtesy of UW-Madison Libraries Department of Special Collections
Poet, artist, and publisher Charles Alexander was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, when his father was in the Air Force. The family moved around and ultimately settled in Norman, Oklahoma. As a youth, Alexander was attracted to Victorian and Romantic poetry, reading Tennyson, Keats, Browning, and Shakespeare. As a student at Stanford University, he discovered the work of the Black Mountain poets, including Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan. He graduated with a BA in English in 1976 and began graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He met publisher Allan Kornblum, who encouraged Alexander to learn bookmaking from Walter Hamady. He took his first class with Hamady in 1979 and continued to take courses even after earning a graduate degree in English. He established a poetry reading series and bought a press to devote more time to his print projects. With Hamady and other students, Alexander co-curated Breaking the Bindings: American Book Art Now, a seminal exhibit of artists’ books made between 1980 and 1983 held at the Elvehjem Museum of Art. Alexander then moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1984 to concentrate on printing poetry books. There he met his wife, painter Cynthia Miller, and became part of a thriving artistic community. He is drawn to experimental poetry and long poems and has published numerous works under the Pared So Thin Press, Black Mesa Press and Chax imprints. “A desert guy who writes about water,” he is the author of six full-length books of poetry, including the recent AT the Edge OF the Sea, and thirteen chapbooks.
