By Jenna Fisher, Director of Marketing and Production
What better way to celebrate the holidays than to put more books into more hands? Use this Holiday Gift Guide to find the perfect book for everyone on your list, and get FREE SHIPPING on any BOA Bookstore purchase through December 16! It’s the holiday season made easy.
1. For the lover of life, truth, and all things divine.
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 Edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser Foreword by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison Winner, 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award This gorgeous volume is the culmination of a 40-year career by Lucille Clifton, whom The Nation places “among the very few true poets of our times.” The book combines all of Clifton’s published collections with 69 previously unpublished poems. Named a “Best Book” and an “essential” read by Publishers Weekly, NPR Books, Ms. Magazine, Coal Hill Review, and more, this landmark collection is a must-have for all poetry lovers. “The ‘Collected Clifton' is a gift, not just for her fans…but for all of us.” –Washington Post
2. For the friend dealing with a break up (or even the ex).
The Book of Goodbyes Poems by Jillian Weise Winner, 2013 James Laughlin Award Winner, Isabella Gardner Poetry Award Called “edgy” and “in-your-face” by Library Journal, Jillian Weise’s award-winning collection “slyly deliver[s] ache and anger” in poems which chronicle an affair with a man she names Big Logos. According to Publishers Weekly, “These fierce, hip, heartbreaking love poems call out to a lover who can’t be lived with or without. They’re humorous, odd, and full of all the unreasonable truth of love. This book is the real thing.” The Book of Goodbyes is named a "Best Book of 2013" by both Publishers Weekly and NPR Books.
3. For the sarcastic relative who jokes with morbidity.
The Era of Not Quite Stories by Douglas Watson Winner, BOA Short Fiction Prize HTML Giant calls this collection a “Cirque du Soleil for book nerds,” which offers “absurdity, hilarity, heady contemplation, killer prose, and deaths galore.” Chock-a-block with humor and philosophical asides, futility is a theme of the book, but so is the necessity of trying.
4. For the son or daughter serving in the military.
The Stick Soldiers Poems by Hugh Martin Winner, A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize At age 19, Hugh Martin withdrew from college when his National Guard unit was activated for deployment to Iraq. He spent 11 months in Iraq as the driver of his platoon sergeant’s Humvee. These poems recount his time in basic training, his preparation for deployment, and ultimately, the journey to Iraq and back home.
5. For the one who speaks nonsense, yet always makes sense.
There’s a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick Poems by Michael Teig This collection is “brimming with wit,” according to Booklist, which also calls the book a “picturesque mural that doesn’t quite make sense, yet, curiously, leads to wonder and excitement.” Intriguing and self-effacing, this has “one of the boldest titles in poetry-book history … there is nothing here that is definitive, and that is the point.”
