Mortal Geography
Alexandra Teague

Winner of the 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry

Winner of the Gold Medal in Poetry from the California Book Awards

Alexandra Teague explores how language alternately empowers and fails us in this smart, searching and accessible debut. Drawing on sources as varied as ESL classroom discussions, a colonial travelogue, and the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, the poems in this collection magically reveal the landscape of our emotional geography, unfolding like roadmaps of the human experience. Mortal Geography is both playful and poignant; it marks the emergence of a confident new voice.

“While Mortal Geography does function as a kind of traveler's notebook, it is more importantly an exploration of syntax in all its forms—the assumptions of English grammar, the intervals of time, the sequence of the human genome, latitudes and longitudes, and, of course, forms of verse.”
—The Rumpus

Alexandra Teague is the author of many books of poetry, including The Wise and Foolish Builders. She has published poems in many periodicals, among them the Iowa Review, Missouri Review, Paris Review, and Slate, as well as Best American Poetry 2009, Best New Poets 2008 and the Yale Anthology of Younger American Poetry. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Idaho.  

Paperback / $15.00 (Can. $16.50) / ISBN 978-0-89255-358-7 / 88 Pages / Poetry