Critical Commentary
Praise for Our Mother the Mountain
"Alexander Joseph has added great depth to poetry’s snowpack at 9,000 feet in these Indian Peaks. His cold meltings wildflower the thoughts of an earned solitude. He wears the mood of weathers like a favorite sweater. Joseph is the poet hermit opening his door to share the makings of daily bread and the blessings of mountain chores. When I put this book down I felt the same satisfaction as after a day of splitting wood. In these days of pandemic and war-threat stress these wonderful prose poems remind us to look up and within the healing of a life lived close to Mother Nature."
—Mike Parker, author of several collections of poems, most recently Kimono Mountain and others
Praise for Broken Light in a Burning Wood
What a thoroughly honest book. Despite the catastrophic fires and uncertain times of our season on earth, Alexander Shalom Joseph has gone off in search of beauty, like John Keats did two hundred years ago. Love moves through these pages on invisible feet. In this work, we find that we can’t hope for beauty without telling some hard, hard truths.
—Andrew Schelling author of Love and the Turning Seasons: India’s Poetry of Erotic & Spiritual Longing
Praise for The Last of the Light
I have almost never been so lost in a story, and so emotionally affected. Joseph portrays the mundane everyday life as a matter of spiritual importance and beauty, even amidst death and destruction. Like Anne Frank's diary, the young man's writing keeps him afloat and allows the reader to become part of his mind. This book is truly life changing.
—Tabitha Robinson, Reviewer at Reedsy
Praise for American Wasteland
In American Wasteland, Joseph shines a kaleidoscopic light on the mundane until it fractures into the unexpected.”
—Rachel Weaver, author of Point of Direction
