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House of Deer
"Like the Oppen she takes as her epigraph, Sasha Steensen's is a poetry that feels magically made via both subtraction and building. With language as lush as Hopkins' and then as small and weird as Niedecker's, Steensen tells a story, or alights in and out of a story, all her own. It's an American story, too, with all the bloodiness and experiment that such a thing requires."—Maggie Nelson
Sasha Steensen's third volume is a lyric inquiry into a personal history of the back-to-the-land idealism of the 1970s, with its promises and failings, naturalism gone awry, and journeys into the worlds of addiction, recovery, and, ultimately, family. "If family is a body, learn its anatomy," Steensen writes early in the book, immediately before upending all our expectations and giving us new thoughts to think.
The family bought a rural plot & planted a garden.
The family formed thoughts.
Within these thoughts, eggs hatched, animals were born, little wars formed. Each thought said unspeakable things to the other thoughts.
As you know, unspoken thoughts rot.
Sasha Steensen teaches poetry workshops, literature courses, letterpress printing, and bookmaking at Colorado State University. She is the author of The Method (2008) and A Magic Book (Alberta Prize, 2004), and chapbooks including A History of the Human Family (2010), The Future of an Illusion (2008), and correspondence (with Gordon Hadfield, 2004). Steensen is also co-editor of Bonfire Press, and she serves as one of the poetry editors for Colorado Review.
Sasha Steensen's third volume is a lyric inquiry into a personal history of the back-to-the-land idealism of the 1970s, with its promises and failings, naturalism gone awry, and journeys into the worlds of addiction, recovery, and, ultimately, family. "If family is a body, learn its anatomy," Steensen writes early in the book, immediately before upending all our expectations and giving us new thoughts to think.
The family bought a rural plot & planted a garden.
The family formed thoughts.
Within these thoughts, eggs hatched, animals were born, little wars formed. Each thought said unspeakable things to the other thoughts.
As you know, unspoken thoughts rot.
Sasha Steensen teaches poetry workshops, literature courses, letterpress printing, and bookmaking at Colorado State University. She is the author of The Method (2008) and A Magic Book (Alberta Prize, 2004), and chapbooks including A History of the Human Family (2010), The Future of an Illusion (2008), and correspondence (with Gordon Hadfield, 2004). Steensen is also co-editor of Bonfire Press, and she serves as one of the poetry editors for Colorado Review.
- GenresPoetry
93 pages, Paperback
First published May 13, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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June 19, 2014http://www.full-stop.net/2014/06/18/r...
Review by Laura Creste
Reading House of Deer, Sasha Steensen’s third collection of poetry is like opening jewelry boxes buried within dresser drawers. She calls on things hidden and precious, a fawn inside a doe; eggs hatching within thoughts; a pearl. Much of the book is composed of small squares of text, centered on the white page — though they’re broken up by longer essayistic sections, including one of the best pieces in the book, “Personal Poem Including Opium’s History.”
By turns aphoristic and impenetrable, Sasha Steensen has an ear for the strange. She can be playful like Hopkins, whom she styles herself after in a poem called “Fragments” and whose name she takes for the family’s street. Neat as Russian nesting dolls, these poems have a cumulative power. The poet builds on the ideas of what it means to be a sister (name dropping Antigone), addiction, what belongs in a poem, and the difficulty of “learning to recognize a story.”
Touching on these different threads of the collection (childhood in rural middle America, tales about deer, memory) Steensen comes at the narrative of a family obliquely. The family is a monolith, unnumbered and never individuated.
Read more here: http://www.full-stop.net/2014/06/18/r...
Review by Laura Creste
Reading House of Deer, Sasha Steensen’s third collection of poetry is like opening jewelry boxes buried within dresser drawers. She calls on things hidden and precious, a fawn inside a doe; eggs hatching within thoughts; a pearl. Much of the book is composed of small squares of text, centered on the white page — though they’re broken up by longer essayistic sections, including one of the best pieces in the book, “Personal Poem Including Opium’s History.”
By turns aphoristic and impenetrable, Sasha Steensen has an ear for the strange. She can be playful like Hopkins, whom she styles herself after in a poem called “Fragments” and whose name she takes for the family’s street. Neat as Russian nesting dolls, these poems have a cumulative power. The poet builds on the ideas of what it means to be a sister (name dropping Antigone), addiction, what belongs in a poem, and the difficulty of “learning to recognize a story.”
Touching on these different threads of the collection (childhood in rural middle America, tales about deer, memory) Steensen comes at the narrative of a family obliquely. The family is a monolith, unnumbered and never individuated.
Read more here: http://www.full-stop.net/2014/06/18/r...
July 14, 2014
This collection almost reads like a thought experiment. It is an exploration very much rooted in time (this varies, but touches on the 70s often) as well as place (Ohio). It conjured my own memories of growing up in Ohio in the late 70s and early 80s. In fact, it captured that feeling so clearly I could smell the humidity and feel the damp earth under my feet. Most of the poems are very naturalistic and language based. There is a great deal of repetition employed (to good effect) as well as experimentation with spaces (or lack thereof). My favorite part of the book, The Girl & the Deer, employed a different voice and was a departure from the structure of the rest of the book, though not the tone. It reminded me of Craig Morgan Teicher's tales in Cradle Book. Overall a nice collection.
November 18, 2014
This book is just so good. I'm never going to be able to tell you how good. If you are a lover or student of poetry read this book. Sasha Steensen is amazing and brilliant! Also, if you have a chance to see her read...go! You will not be disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews