Ominous Music Intensifying

by Alexandra Teague

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2024

About the author

Alexandra Teague was born in Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and has since lived in Missouri, Montana, Florida (where she earned her MFA at the University of Florida in 1998), Hawaii, California, and Idaho. Her first book of poetry, Mortal Geography, (Persea 2010) won the 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and the 2010 California Book Award. Her second book, The Wise and Foolish Builders, was written and researched in part thanks to a 2011 NEA fellowship, and published by Persea in 2015. Her first novel, The Principles Behind Flotation, is newly out from Skyhorse. She is also, with Brian Clements and Dean Rader, an editor of the forthcoming anthology Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence in the U.S. (Beacon, December 2017).

Alexandra's poetry has also appeared in anthologies including Best American Poetry 2009 and New California Writing 2012 and 2013, as well as journals including The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, New England Review, Threepenny Review, and The Southern Review.

A 2006-2008 Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and winner of the 2014 Jeffrey E. Smith Missouri Review Editors' Prize, she is an Associate Professor in University of Idaho's MFA program, faculty advisor for Fugue, and an editor for Broadsided Press. She is also a founding member of the BASK Collective. She lives in Moscow, Idaho, with her husband, the musician and composer Dylan Champagne.

Reviews

[Billy Driscoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

That rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem actually seems like a helluva guy

4.1/5

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five-star fabulous! In this collection, the poet skewers 21st-century American culture in which the Rough Beast lords over “this gyre of scrolling and rescrolling for meaning.” Here we are in the Late Anthropocene, and this is all we have to show for it. That said, there will never be a more flattering portrait of that sad clown Mitch McConnell.


As if a beast can enter, at will, any myth’s
clear walls: as if each labyrinth promises anything
but a nest for the egg of the self you’re already
hatched.
—from “In the Glass Labyrinth at the Nelson Atkins Art Museum, the Rough Beast is Mistaken for the Minotaur,” p. 78


Funny-not-funny mother of all mythologies:
that the future will mirror the name we call it.
—from “In the Glass Labyrinth at the Nelson Atkins Art Museum, the Rough Beast is Mistaken for the Minotaur,” p. 78


“Everyone in
me is a bird,” and wasn’t Sexton literally confessing
that she lived in a real body with too many wings crammed
inside it?
—from “The Rough Beast Literally Arrives,” p. 80


Favorite Poems:
“America the Beautiful: Thriftstore”
“The Horse That Threw Me”
“Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory”
“The Rough Beast Receives an Invitation from America”
“Correlations”
“Crossed Letters from a Concerned American”
“[It is undone business I speak of, this morning]”
“Field Blocks”
“The Rough Beast Takes a Painting Class”
“The Rough Beast Would Like The Future To Be Clear”
“Lake Chacolet”
“Eclipses”
“The Rough Beast Talks to the Falcon”
[“I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties.]”
“Cambium”
“In the Glass Labyrinth at the Nelson Atkins Art Museum, the Rough Beat is Mistaken for the Minotaur”
“The Rough Beast Literally Arrives”

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about the current, horrible American political landscape - the pandemic, climate change, gun violence.

from The Rough Beast Receives an Invitation from America: "Come with knees unbent, / your flag pin pinned, your beast eyes focused / on the ball. Don't cheat by asking us what game. / Catch or be caught. Come half-mast as a school flag / in the aftermath. It's called respect. / Come TSA-approved, pre-checked. All contamination / sealed in one-quart bag. Put your dirty paws / above your head. Be the fears that we expect. Dark / shadows in city streets. Foreclosed windows. Meth."

from Correlations: "God / who wants to sit at his swiveling / chair-desk as the bell buzzes, as the teacher flips the lights / on like the fourth day. God / who wants standardized tests / & pink erasers & the hearts of each American. Twizzlers & tator tot & / obeyance of metal detectors inside & / outside the hearts."

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author gave a great reading at my local library. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory was a favorite with "mine knives have seen", a misheard saying from childhood.

From crossed Letters From A Concerned American: "I mean , it's humbling to be lost in your own country Mitch. I mean, I'm scared for this country. I think we need a map that's big enough for contradictions; I think we're seeing the directions wrong, or looking in too few. We're talking stock markets versus aliens when what we need is fields of real living corn with beautiful, strange tassels."

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Before/ an American invented it, who ever dreamed/ of beaded ice cream? Who imagined hate on a sunny day?”

[Jane Freiman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ominous indeed 3