A critical look at the United States of America as a “factory of loathing,” the place where our Second Amendment assembly lines shape—with incredible uniformity—the various words and weapons that are then distributed throughout the world.
“Steffen’s warm, generous, and lively poems live in the present, grateful for the whole of every moment—luscious, embarrassing, lonely, or loving, reveling in the sensual.”
April Ossmann
“Steffen’s plain-style approach allows his insights, as it were, to sneak up on us—until we discover ourselves (how did it happen?) in a world so full of pathos that we catch our breaths.”
Sydney Lea
“Michael Steffen’s unblinking gaze is often ironic, which makes his capacity for tenderness even more impressive.”
Betsy Sholl
Michael N. Steffen
(1958–2023)
is the author of five poetry collections: No Good at Sea, Heart Murmur, Bad Behavior, Blood Narrative, and In the Factory of Loathing. He was a mentor for the PEN Prison Writing Program, and he won the Legible Press Poetry Prize,
the Alsop Review Poetry Prize, and the Pennsylvania Poetry Society’s Cecilia Parsons Miller Award, as well as a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. From 1996 to 2002, Steffen hosted the Riverside Reading Series in Easton, Pennsylvania. He died a week before his sixty-fifth birthday.