BOA Blog

Dear readers, this weekend, we invite you to celebrate Mother's Day with a special poem from Li-Young Lee's Rose. Read the poem below and enjoy a video of the author discussing his work for the Poetry Breaks series from the WGBH New Television Workshops. I Ask My Mother to Sing She begins, and my grandmother joins her.Mother and daughter sing like young girls.If my father were alive, he would playhis accordion and sway like a boat. I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watchthe rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickersrunning...

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Birth Marks by Jim Daniels. Birth Marks She was stymied by pizza, but notby ice cream. She ordered vanillafor its sound. She reigned as Queenof the Isle of You Decide.He had the patience of a splinterworking its way to the surfaceand the business senseof a herd of cattle.She used her checkbookto prop up every minor purchase.He used cash for the benefitof its traceless disappearance.In short, he was a bad magicianand she the nervous assistant,a match manufactured in a damp...

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Praises & Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic, translated by Judith Kerman. To Go Lightly by Ángela Hernández Núñez In innocence, eternity is possible. But I have loved in haste, with the attentiveness of objects that fly away. I find myself saying, close the doors. I find myself saying, love you ought to leave. I find myself touching lines in the stone. I think about the women who waited, not for Ulysses, but for ordinary men....

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems of Sohrab Sepehri, translated by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. Bright Existence Sky, more blue.Water, even bluer!I am on the veranda, Rana by the pond in the garden.She is washing clothes.Leaves are trickling down.“What a sad season,” my mother said this morning.I responded, “Life is an apple best eaten unpeeled.”Our neighbor weaves at her window, humming a soft tune.I am reading the Vedas,sketching pebbles, birds, clouds—Full sun.Starlings flock,nasturtiums burst into blossom.And...

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. To make up for our lost poem from last week, here is a double-feature of two poems from The Human Half by Deborah Brown—now available for pre-order in the BOA Bookstore. Passion Flower This year the white passion flower,no longer extinct, popped up in Hunan province.In an Ecuadorian night, by flashlight,a Pinocchio lizard, a frog, a jellyfish,back from the dead.A supernova begins with the deathof a star, each one born from dust.Liu Xiaobo, in prison, wrote to his wife:“Let the dust bury you.” But he sawa ridge...