BOA Blog

The Rumpus is praising Geffrey Davis' new debut collection Revising the Storm in a recent review by Jess Smith. Discussing such topics as childhood, a drug-addicted father, marriage, a second marriage, and the birth of a child, Davis opens up to his readers on a most personal level. In her review, Smith notes the poet's transparency. "The bulk of Revising the Storm deals with what we see when we are very young that we cannot unsee, how we learn and cannot unlearn certain vicious truths. The speakers are frequently trying to make sense of past trauma but the very presence and...

Jim Daniels' newest collection, Birth Marks, resonated strongly with Passages North reviewer and self-proclaimed "Yooper," Zarah Moeggenberg. "Michigan is all over this book and in this 80-degree weather I want to go back to the blizzard I missed ... Daniels' book brings me back to small town Michigan and especially the rusty clink and clang, the steady whiz and honk of Detroit at rush hour. This book has its hands dirtied Michigan brown," she writes. The review highlights the "braided, complex, and rich" narrative style Daniels employs in his poetry, comparing his technique to that of Susan Terris and Aimee Nezhukumatathil....

Sohrab Sepehri's The Oasis of Now, translated from the Persian by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, is a finalist for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry! Launched by Three Percent in 2007, the Best Translated Book Awards (BTBA) for poetry and fiction "aim to bring attention to the best original works of international fiction and poetry published in the U.S. during the previous year." Each winning translator and author is awarded a $5,000 cash prize and an award plaque. Earlier this month, the BTBA won "The International Literary Translation Initiative Award” at the inaugural International Book Industry...

We are pleased to announce that Jillian Weise's The Book of Goodbyes is one of four poetry titles on the 2014 SIBA Book Awards Long List! According to the Southern Independent Booksellers Award, "each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite 'handsell' books of the year. These are the 'southern' books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn't stop talking about. The SIBA Book Award was created to recognize great books of southern origin." The Long List, announced earlier this month, is a list of books that booksellers and their customers...

In a wonderfully unconventional piece on Ko Un's Flowers of a Moment (BOA, 2006), Dave Bonta of Via Negativa says, "Tonight, I don’t feel like pretending to be a book reviewer. (Does it really matter what I have to say about a guy who’s been nominated so many times for the Nobel Prize?) Tonight I would rather respond to a few of Ko Un's brief poems as if he were right here, sharing drinks and conversation." Bonta continues, attempting an intimate "conversation" in verse with selections from Flowers of a Moment. Here are a few conversation excerpts we especially enjoy:...