BOA Blog

National Book Award-winning Poet Lucille Clifton Dies Rochester, NY — BOA Editions is sad to mark the passing of poet Lucille Clifton on February 13, 2010. Lucille Clifton (born Thelma Lucille Sayles) was raised in Depew, New York. She attended Howard University from 1953 to 1955 and graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia in 1955. In 1958 she married Fred James Clifton. She worked as a claims clerk in the New York State Division of Employment, Buffalo (1958–1960), and as literature assistant in the Office of Education in Washington, D.C. (1960–1971). Her first poetry collection Good...

The Board of Directors, staff and poets of BOA Editions, Ltd. are greatly saddened to report the death of longtime BOA poet Lucille Clifton. Lucille passed away Saturday morning February 13 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore at age 73. Lucille had been ill for quite some time, but the exact cause of her death is still uncertain. Lucille was one of the great voices in world poetry, and a wonderful human being. We will miss her tremendously. The BOA Editions family sends our condolences to her sister, three daughters, son, and three grandchildren. A list of Lucille’s BOA poetry...

[caption id="attachment_466" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova."][/caption] Our final installment for Valentine's Week is the title poem from Cecilia Woloch's Carpathia. This is also the last day to receive our special Valentine's Day offer: buy a copy of Carpathia for only $10 (shipping included)! To get this deal, just call 585-546-3410 (ext 13), and ask for Peter. Here's what Cecilia said about her poem Carpathia: "For me, it speaks of how we move forward and backward in time, in love, into the past and the future, simultaneously, how we just keep going on, and also returning..." Carpathia...

The next poem that Cecilia Woloch picked to share for Valentine's Day week is "Pantoum: le Jardin d'Isabelle" from Carpathia. Cecilia says, "The pantoum form provided me with a vessel to contain/convey a love that didn't fit the traditional parameters, but went far beyond them..." Pantoum: le Jardin d'Isabelle The love of my lover for his wife: his name being stone, the word for stone, and her name like a flower, Isabelle-- who has thrown herself into the garden this summer, made it a paradise. His name is the stone I polished in my mouth all winter long: Pierre, as...

In honor of Valentine's Day, we're going to share some love (or, in case of today's selection, "anti-love") poems from Cecilia Woloch's heartfelt & yearning collection, Carpathia. We also asked Cecilia to give brief introductions to the poems. As a special offer for this week only, we're also offering Carpathia for only $10 (shipping included)! To get this special Valentine's Day offer, just call 585-546-3410 (ext 13), and ask for Peter. Here's what Cecilia Woloch had to say about her poem "Anniversary": "I think of this almost as an 'anti-love poem.' It holds a moment for me -- luminous and...