BOA Blog

[caption id="attachment_266" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Board member Glenn William and Melissa Hall sign annual campaign letters"][/caption] For the past three weeks the BOA board, staff, interns, and I have been signing letters, and stuffing and sealing envelopes for our annual campaign. With book sales only funding 40% of our budget, the annual campaign is an extremely important source of funding for us. This year we are honored to have former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Charles Simic serve as our Honorary Campaign Chair. Charles Simic included the following note in our campaign materials: “I was delighted to join...

[caption id="attachment_247" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="BOA Honorary Vice Chair Boo Poulin's special BOA cookies"][/caption] Thanks to BOA board member John Roche for this blog entry about the BOA Holiday Gala. Below the entry are photos from the weekend festivities! Last Friday night (December 4) the Anderson Alley holiday festivities got off to a rousing start when the jazz group stationed outside the BOA Editions’ office was confronted by peripatetic musicians from a Civil War reenactors group, intent on jamming. And jam they did on a lively version of “Dixie”! Following that musical set, it was the poets’ turn. Four RIT students...

[caption id="attachment_228" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Goethe"][/caption] On Poetry Translation, Health Care, and Conversations with the Visionary and Deceased Have you seen a review of poetry in translation in a major newspaper lately? I haven’t either. Apparently, American aren’t interested in poetry from the rest of the world until the poet is old and bald or wins a Nobel Prize, but I wonder if that’s true. People love reading about the infra-realists in Bolano’s novels from an older Mexico City poetry scene. Isn’t it possible they’d also be interested in hearing about current poetry movements in China and Mexico, movements that reflect...

[caption id="attachment_83" align="alignleft" width="195" caption="BOA Open House During Holiday Gala"][/caption] This weekend is the big Holiday Gala shindig here at Anderson Alley. All four floors of the building are open and you can browse around, chat with all the artists, listen to live music on every floor, and - of course - get a start on your holiday shopping. BOA will be open both days and all staff and many board members will be here too. As a special bonus, we'll be hosting a brief poetry reading from 7:30-8PM featuring four talented young poets from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)....

[caption id="attachment_204" align="alignleft" width="201" caption="Cool Auditor by Ray Gonzalez"][/caption] Congratulations to Ray Gonzalez on this new review of his prose poetry collection Cool Auditor in the most recent issue of Publishers Weekly! In his 10th book, renowned prose poet Gonzalez proclaims he is at “the crossroads in [his] throat” where he “looks both ways.” Gonzalez is as quirky as ever, matching the didactic tone and jargon of a scientist with the sensibilities of artists like Kenneth Rexroth, Hart Crane and Picasso, among others, who walk in and out of the poems. Juxtaposition of unlike images is Gonzalez's m.o., making for...