Burning Tongues

A selection of new and previously
published poems from a key voice in the new generation of central
European post-Communist poets.

Aleš Šteger's poetry is multi-layered and technically versatile,
ingenious and inventive, adventurous and playful yet serious in
intention, and above all, incessantly curious in its investigations
which the reader is invited to share – and he loves to ambush the reader
with the unexpected.

Notable for its moral engagement, his poetry is acutely precise in
its observation and concentration, and could also be described – in very
broad terms – as surrealist. His influences are mainly European, most
notably the Serbian master poet Vasko Popa and the French surrealist
Francis Ponge, whose mantle he could be said to have taken on in prose
poems which describe everyday objects in minute terms, only to explode
in the imagination through what he perceives in them.