An Ominous Evening with Alexandra Teague in Conversation with Sasha Steensen
Category: Event Calendar
Date and Time
- Thursday, May 1, 2025 7pm - 8pm
Location
Old Firehouse Books
232 Walnut Street
Details
Join Old Firehouse Books as we welcome Alexandra Teague to celebrate her latest poetry release, [OMINOUS MUSIC INTENSIFYING]. On May 1st, in store at Old Firehouse Books from 7-8pm she will be joined by Sasha Steensen as they discuss Alexandra's poems. Books can be purchased in store or online (we do not ship internationally), as well as at the event, we only ask that you wait until the very end of the event to ask for personalization.
About the book:
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-- [ominous music intensifying] takes on the too-muchness of contemporary, apocalypse-prone America with humor, conscience, and the occasional fiddle duel. In this fourth book of poetry, Alexandra Teague expands her subject matter to include chronic pain, generational poverty, and what it means to stay safe--physically and psychologically. Her new poems are reckonings 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.
About Alexandra Teague:
Alexandra Teague is most recently the author of [ominous music intensifying] (Persea 2024). Her first book of poetry, Mortal Geography, (Persea 2010) won the 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and the 2010 California Book Award Gold Medal for Poetry. Her second book, The Wise and Foolish Builders (Persea 2015), was written and researched in part thanks to a 2011 NEA fellowship. Her third book of poetry, Or What We'll Call Desire, was published by Persea in August 2019.
About Sasha Steensen:
Sasha Steensen (she/hers) is the author of six books of poems: House of Deer, The Method, and A Magic Book, all from Fence Books; Gatherest (Ahsahta Press); Everything Awake (Shearsman Press); and Well (Parlor Press, 2024). Recent essays have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Interim, and Essay Press. Steensen teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Colorado State University, where she was named the 2023 Stern Distinguished Professor. She is a poetry editor for Colorado Review and an editor for the Test Site Poetry Series. Living in Fort Collins, Colorado with her husband and two daughters, she tends a garden, a flock of chickens, two standard poodles, and a very fierce barn cat.
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