Book cover of Burning Tongues: New & Selected Poems

Book description

Ales Steger was born in 1973 in Ptuj, Slovenia - where he grew up - then part of the former Yugoslavia ruled by Tito, which gained its independence when he was 18. He published his first collection in 1995 at the age of 22, and was immediately recognised as a…


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Why read it?

1 author picked Burning Tongues as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Burning Tongues is a new and selected poems by the leading Slovene poet, Aleš Šteger. It is immaculately translated by Brian Henry, the great translator from the Slovenian, whose editions of Tomaž Šalamun (1941-2014) are also indispensable reading for anyone interested in European poetry.

Šteger is a different kind of poet than his predecessor – more lapidary, playful without surrealism – but he, too, brings contemporary Slovenian writing into the international mainstream. This book, selected by the author himself, is tightly choreographed and sophisticated – urban and urbane – and has an urgent, contemporary bounce.

It exasperates me how little…

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