BOA Blog

The thrust of Wallace Stevens' poem "Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself" is often repeated as the hard nugget of a quote from William Carlos Williams' poem "A Sort of a Song": "No ideas but in things." If ever a poet's method could be distilled into five words, it is this.  In the newest BOA translation, The Book of Things, (translated from the Slovenian and with an Introduction by Brian Henry), Aleš Šteger simultaneously adopts and discards this poetic advice. Each poem in the book is built around a single, simple noun (or "thing"). For example: Egg, Knots, Stone, Grater, Chocolate, Bread,...

"There's no such thing as bad publicity." That's what they say, right? Even a terrible review usually includes a kernel of positivity - and, at the very least, there's the chance that the reviewer's revulsion will spark someone's curiosity. But the best thing about a bad review is that you don't have to sit down to Sunday dinner with the offending reviewer. The best thing to do is read it (or don't), recycle it, and move on with your life. I mean, it's not like they're your... mom. Which brings us to one of the most nerve-wracking experiences an author can face: the presentation of one's...

Craig Morgan Teicher's Cradle Book is in the running for the Story Prize. The Story Prize is a distinguished annual award given to a short story collection. We hope Craig's book wins. He deserves it. While they're making their decision, the Story Prize people are running brief interviews with authors whose collections have been submitted. Craig's interview just came out and shines a little more light on his singular take on stories, fables, poems, and where Cradle Book lingers in the lands between... What is your writing process like? I write often. If I didn't, I think I'd be pretty hard to deal with....

In honor of Peters Makuck's Long Lens: New & Selected Poems, Newsobsersver.com has a wonderful piece about the man and his work: The publication of a "new and selected" edition of a poet's work is a high-water mark for the writer's career. It allows work from older collections that may have gone out of print to get back into circulation, and in one volume it gives a reader a sense of the writer's themes and subject matter as it evolved over the years. It's also a statement from the publisher that here is a writer whose work has passed the...

[caption id="attachment_448" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Carpathia by Cecilia Woloch"][/caption] Bozena U. Zaremba writes about Cecilia Woloch in the new issue of The Cosmopolitan Review: "Petite figure, dark brown hair - lush and curly. Her slightly slanted eyes are kind, attentive and wide open to people who have come to listen to her poetry. The moment Cecilia Woloch starts to talk, the audience falls silent. This extraordinary gift of attracting people's attention immediately draws the listeners into the vibrant and powerful world of her poetic imagination. The emotional intensity, the meaning of each phrase and the rhythm of every stanza come across...