For AND YET (Forthcoming from Future Tense Books in April 2024):
The Brooklyn Rail: Sex is Not the End reading
Powell’s Books Staff Top Five of 2022
“Genre and Selfhood and Speculation”–on writing And Yet at Heavy Feather Review
“Abject Uncertainty”–And Yet interview at Poetry Northwest with Ashley Yang Thompson
And Yet interview with Alexis Orgera at Full Stop
And Yet interview with Kelly Krumrie at The Adroit Journal
“And Yet asks, What might be gained or lost from living one’s life via text instead of directly participating in the world? Through aphorism, anecdote, observation, and personal narrative, Alessandrelli examines the complex entanglements of sexuality and desire. A profound and concise work of self-construction.” –Patrick Cottrell
“What I find compelling about And Yet is its Leirisian insistence on the “unattenuated crudity” of candid self-disclosure as it juggles its intellectual bricolage and its generational concerns with its speculative fictional narrative. Amid meditations on quotations revealing a fairly individual reading sensibility—Cyril Connolly!—And Yet nonetheless takes on the momentum of a pageturner; I found myself wondering, “What’ll happen to the poor bastard? Will I still like him at the end?” like I was reading a thriller instead of a hybrid whuzzit investigating millennial dilemmas of sex, gender, and intimacy, one written in the grand tradition of poet’s prose. In the immortal words of Bon Scott, “It’s harder than it looks!” –Garrett Caples
For NOTHING OF THE MONTH CLUB (U.K. edition of FUR NOT LIGHT; published by U.K. press Broken Sleep Books in June 2021):
“Alessandrelli’s wry, intelligent poems are relentlessly grounded in the hyperreal of our fast-paced technological present and yet they are supremely successful in finding heartfelt lyricism where one might not expect to find it. Nothing of the Month Club packs a punch - and delivers.” -André Naffis-Sahely
Nothing of the Month Club offers a blend of sadness and the comic that is distinctly Alessandrelli’s own, and it is certainly a combination of the two that is essential to all good absurdist writing.–Mercurius
“Journey into the Wild”–Nothing of the Month Club interview with translator Joshua Pollock at 3:AM
Nothing of the Month Club Surreal-Absurd Sampler at Mercurius
For FUR NOT LIGHT (Published by Burnside Review Press in October 2019):
Fur Not Light is a deeply funny book, with details and stretches that breeze by with set up/punchline directness. In between those lighter moments…are passages that are unshakably beautiful.–Portland Mercury
The importance of Fur Not Light lies in its multiple concerns and varied perspectives that prove life is larger than any one thing, even if one exists as a person. Not only is this book necessary, but it is also kind to its reader, in that it provides the tools with which to enter the poems. Fur Not Light is an example of radical humility, and its widespread concerns for all living life require a levity of ego. Any work of creative writing could be said to chip away at the ego, but few, and I include Jeff Alessandrelli in this group, make the effort to actively challenge the ego.–The Kenyon Review.
The images [in Fur Not Light] are simultaneously strange and yet rooted in the familiar, slightly distorted while still parallel, and betray an attention span either cut short by a threatening nihilism or over-expansive in an effort to encompass as much narrative, from the profound to the mundane, in order to resist such a threat. “Resist” is, after all, the mantra of these times, is it not?– Abigail Chabitnoy at Colorado Review
“Hope”–Fur Not Light at Verse Daily
Fur Not Light—a title borrowed from Russian Absurdist Daanil Kharms—contains, generally speaking, two types of poems, as well as some notable stylistic choices with titling…the collection doesn’t lose its cohesion by taking a few experimental risks—the content is strong enough by itself that the devices, when they do show up, demand an extra close lens.–Entropy
“All and Always Balance”—Fur Not Light interview with Kyle Harvey at Rain Taxi
Fur Not Light, Jeff Alessandrelli’s second book with Burnside Review Press, has had me wandering its psychogeography for a week. First off, to be clear, Fur Not Light led me to flip Guy Debord’s idea of pyschogeography on its head. Rather than “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals,” in Alessandrelli’s psychogeography, an individual’s thoughts, emotions, and behavior create imaginative geographic space.–Michael Sikkema at Heavy Feather Review.
“I’m writing daffodils again”–Fur Not Light interview at The Adroit Journal
Fur Not Light is a collection that acknowledges the obsession with, and the idolization and inevitable destruction of, the self. Jeff Alessandrelli explores the minor, inconsequential actions and thoughts of mundane days, and through describing artistic and awfully detailed events, he makes those thoughts and actions have a lasting impact.–Hong Kong Review of Books
Spokane Public Radio, KPBX 91.1–The Northwest Arts Review (with Harper Quinn)
Learning about the past cannot be mechanical, undertaken for the sake of finite knowledge, but the virtue of learning about one’s self lies in the possibility to analyze the ideas, concepts, and examples from the past in order to improve the state of the things of the present. This idea liberates Alessandrelli’s intellectual strivings and allows him to redirect his work, becoming a representative of a new theoretical approach to poetry.–Fur Not Light review at GASHER
Fur Not Light interview with visual artist Chyrum Lambert @ Full Stop
“The titles in Jeff Alessandrelli’s Fur Not Light – “Be Your Own Hitman,” say, or “Nothing of the Month Club” are grimly funny indicators of what’s to come. These are poems about how to downsize hope, that most human of emotions. “We hope to resign ourselves to hope,” Alessandrelli writes, but, of course, we never quite succeed. Hope and resignation tussle endlessly here like a Buddhist version of Laurel and Hardy. In Fur Not Light wisdom has rhythm.” –Rae Armantrout
For THE MAN ON HIGH: ESSAYS ON SKATEBOARDING, HIP-HOP, POETRY AND THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. (Published in the U.K./U.S. by the UK press Eyewear in March 2018):
Small Press Distribution (SPD) Top 20 Nonfiction Bestseller List–Jan-March 2018
Small Press Distribution (SPD) Top 20 Nonfiction Bestseller List–July-September 2018
Wisconsin Public Radio, KUWS 91.3–The Walt Dizzo Show–The Man on High radio interview
“A refreshingly heartfelt and multivalent treatise on influence, inspiration, and individuality, Alessandrelli’s The Man on High waxes and melds in tribute to a true cultural icon and iconoclast, the B.I.G., along the way reconsidering the nature of the many frames that give us faith amid an era of ‘mere numerical arbitrariness.’“—Blake Butler
“In an era where the imagination is bent on nostalgia, the ’90s is the number one fetish object, and events like the OJ Simpson trial and the LA Riots are being rehashed in Adidas track suits and retro band merch (I’m writing this in a Sade t-shirt I bought in a suburb of St. Louis over the summer), to the extent that Kendall Jenner tried to sell t-shirts with photos of Biggie on them with no permission from his estate and played naive when she got shut down, we need the complex sincerity of The Man on High. This is a rare example of a black musician who helped set the tonal landscape for an entire subculture actually being given credit and proper attention and love. You’ll come away craving a skateboard and some headphones, and feeling Notorious.” —Harmony Holiday
For THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST (Finalist for the 2012 Burnside Review Press Book Award, subsequently published by Burnside Review in March 2014):
Immensely fresh and playful…rooted in a childlike antiquity.—Rain Taxi (print; Winter 2014 issue)
The poems in THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST are imaginative, enigmatic and inviting.—The Volta
THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST…is definitely a collection of poems doing something different, especially when compared to the work of a lot of other younger poets. Alessandrelli’s poetry has predecessors, certainly. But it bravely wears its influences on its sleeves, and somehow feels original as a result.—Coldfront Mag
Alessandrelli’s poetry… provides its reader with an interesting thought angle, one contemporarily fresh. THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST… is a collection worth wrestling with. And checking out.—The Rumpus
THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST deserves a moment in the spotlight, and a lifetime of reading. So, thank you Jeff Alessandrelli, for your words, and for making us feel like we’re not alone in our thoughts.—The Poetry Question
THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST is an entertaining, insightful book of poems that refuses to settle and embodies a restless, self-conscious pursuit of how a poem both knows and doesn’t know.—American Microreviews
Powell’s Books Staff Top Five of 2014
“In THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST, Jeff Alessandrelli does a beautiful job using others’ lines and styles as a jumping-off point for his own poems. And though they are homages, they are always totally surprising, and totally his. They are not a game. Alessandrelli is a real human being, unlike the authors of some other poetry books you might be considering right now. Put them down. They do not, underneath their stylistic pyrotechnics, have a beating heart.”—Matthew Rohrer
For ERIK SATIE WATUSIES HIS WAY INTO SOUND (Poetic biography of the French avant-garde composer Erik Satie, published by Ravenna Press in October 2011):
A lot is packed into this slim volume of poems, but it doesn’t feel weighed down by its focused subject. It’s clear that a lot of research went into the book, but the poems sprawl, connect, and open up in ways that allow readers to enjoy them on their own. While the poems may be focused on Satie, they are ultimately ontological in nature—searching for answers and understanding but ultimately returning to that nothing, nothing, nothing and nothing.—New Pages
…[W]e can consider the identity manipulation in Erik Satie Watusies His Way Into Sound a love letter between two artists. Of course, “We love those best who we fleetingly / recognize and can just as quickly forget”, so it should come as no surprise that after recognizing Satie in himself and himself in Satie, Alessandrelli demands that we “Forget forget Erik Satie.” Once we forget him, he “is nowhere / to be found,” but we can take comfort in the fact that “Someone we can’t remember // once played such haunting music / on a broken piano // he dreamed was an” author writing poems about Erik Satie and what it means to be Jeff Alessandrelli.—HTML Giant
“Satie’s compositions transmit the sensation of speaking, and these poems are a great letter inside that speech, a musical philology, speech wrested from rests.”—Arda Collins
For DON’T LET ME FORGET TO FEED THE SHARKS (Chapbook published by Poor Claudia in 2012):
If you’re into handsome books of fun poems, I highly recommend Don’t Let Me Forget to Feed the Sharks—Lit Pub
Personal letter from Nick Admussen about Don’t Let Me Forget To Feed the Sharks—Horse Less Press
For PEOPLE ARE PLACES ARE PLACES ARE PEOPLE (Chapbook published by Imaginary Friend Press in 2013):
“I know that the sun is a byproduct/ of an infinitude of marigolds/and pure supple honey,/ but I don’t believe it,” Alessandrelli writes in “It’s the Things You Know that Are Hardest to Believe.” It’s as if a poetic truth can be believed into being, but once it exists, it no longer relies on the believer.—Alice Bolin, Cutbank
“Knowing exactly what you mean is a sure sign that your poem is bad. It is hard to know exactly what Jeff Alessandrelli’s poems mean, and that’s what makes them waver and shimmer, like the air above a fire. They are approximate, like feelings. If you have tried and failed to describe your own experience to yourself, you know what it’s like to be in an Alessandrelli poem, a place where you can know something but not believe it, and vice versa; a place where understanding is not deeper knowledge but an alternative kind of access…Jeff Alessandrelli is an experimentalist: he writes poems not to tell us what he knows, but to find out.”—Elisa Gabbert