[ominous music intensifying]
Poems by Alexandra Teague
In poems that bring together traditional American patriotic songs and current American horrors—and in which Yeats’ famous apocalyptic figure of the Rough Beast takes a painting class, wears a spacesuit, and listens to public service announcements—Alexandra Teague takes on the too-muchness of contemporary America with humor, conscience, and the occasional fiddle duel. [ominous music intensifying] is a reckoning with sexism and dental trauma, Mitch McConnell and UFOs, torture devices and sad clown paintings—and with some of the most urgent crises of our time: gun violence, pandemics, and climate change.
“In [ominous music intensifying], Alexandra Teague tunes into the uncanny soundtrack that hums beneath 21st-century American life. It is a song whose notes of compassion and connection, suspicion, and violence, play over a thrumming baseline of want. Throughout her clear-eyed contemplations of the how the past (personal, national, and cosmic together) pushes its unwieldy way into the present, lugging its laundry bag of injustices and irresolutions, Teague offers us a surprising article of faith: ‘this country is bigger than we’re making it.’ Given the stakes, the kind of enduring commitment to human care and humane potential that Teague models in these poems is both harrowing and radical.” —Kimberly Johnson
Alexandra Teague is the author of three previous books of poetry, a novel, and Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir. She is also coeditor of two anthologies, including Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Teague is recipient of fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors. She is Professor of English at the University of Idaho.
Paperback / $18.00 (Can. $24.00) / ISBN 978-0-89255-606-9 / 96 pages / Poetry