BOA Blog

[caption id="attachment_691" align="alignleft" width="123" caption="Kazim Ali. BOA poet."][/caption] BOA poet Kazim Ali (The Fortieth Day) has written an illuminating essay on the poetics of Lucille Clifton. The essay first appeared in Barn Owl Review and is now posted in its entirety at Delirious Hem. It will also appear in Kazim's upcoming book, Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence, which is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press. The essay begins: "Lucille Clifton is known as a poet of simple and clear diction, informed by trickster sensibility, and is as facile with the cadences of King James...

"Plastic Beatitude", by Laure-Anne Bosselaar, was featured by the Writer's Almanac blog on March 23rd, 2010. The poem is from Bosselaar's 1997 book, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf. In his foreward, Charles Simic describes Bosselaar's work as "an authentic poetic voice, one serious enough to be heard at the end of this long and brutal century." The book captures the lives of "lost souls running," speaking of eccentric, vibrant people, who lived in Europe in the midst of and the fallout from the World Wars. An Exerpt from "Plastic Beatitude": Our neighbors, the Pazzotis, live in a long narrow...

[caption id="attachment_591" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="Ray Gonzalez. BOA poet."][/caption] Here's a great review of Cool Auditor by Ray Gonzales from the El Paso Times. You can read the start below and then read the complete review here: [El Paso Times Review of Cool Auditor] "Ray Gonzalez's newest book, "Cool Auditor: Poems" (BOA Editions, $16 paperback), is a collection of prose poems that reveals this prolific writer at the height of his powers. Gonzalez, an El Paso native and a professor of creative writing at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, has published 10 previous books of poetry, as well as three...

[caption id="attachment_444" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Ángela Hernández Núñez. BOA poet."][/caption] On their website, the online journal Molossus describes itself as: "an online broadside of world literature. We publish original interviews, reviews, essays, reportage, & more. We reprint selected work, too. We publish interviews & reviews on a weekly basis, with a commitment to contributing toward the transatlantic and English-language diaspora dialogue. We are especially keen to review literature in translation & book arts editions of contemporary literature." Molossus has reviewed some BOA books in the past and we're thrilled that they picked up on our newest translation, Praises & Offenses: Three...

[caption id="attachment_401" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="G.C. Waldreps Hat. BOA Poet Hat."][/caption] Congrats to Cecilia Woloch for having her book Carpathia named a Best Book of Poetry, 2009 by Herald de Paris: "Carpathia, Cecilia Woloch (American Poets Continuum, BOA Editions) Anyone who knows or reads Cecilia Woloch understands that travel is what makes this exotic creature tick. And indeed, through the sultry-voiced abundance of every lush line, Woloch’s subjects are laced with the backdrop of far-flung places. Like taking a year off to travel around the world with a lover (or two), Carpathia finds each day an intoxicating delight. Likewise, every poem,...