BOA Blog

Jim Daniels' new collection Birth Marks (BOA, 2013) has been in the media spotlight in recent weeks. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says the new book, "...seems to contain more instances of Black Sabbath, Iggy pop, Led Zeppelin and other figures not usually associated with serious poetry..." According to Daniels, these pop culture references "are connected to the omnipresence of technology." “'There's a reason why it's called Birth Marks,'" says Daniels in the review. “'That place (Detroit) is where I'm from, and it's marked me. And it will mark me forever because birthmarks don't go away. The place where you grew up, that...

Poet and book reviewer Lynn Domina delves into Bruce Beasley's Theophobia (BOA, 2012), calling it "both the sort of book I immediately gravitate to and the sort of book I ordinarily avoid ... Beasley's poems do demand an attentive reader; but they demand the sort of attention that is most pleasurable, a reader who is immersed in the questions, who is fully engaged with the language, who surrenders to the poems' guidance." Theophobia is Beasley's seventh collection, and the latest volume in his ongoing spiritual meditation, which forms a kind of postmodern devotional poetry in a reinvention of the tradition...

BOA congratulates Publisher Peter Conners on his 10th anniversary with BOA Editions. Thank you, Peter, for your enduring passion and commitment to BOA's mission, for 10 dedicated years of bringing high quality literature into people's lives! Cheers to you!

Being one of only three English translations of Marosa di Giorgio's superb poetry,  Diadem offers a "fuller range" of her work, according to a NewPages review. Diadem, translated from the Spanish by Adam Giannelli, was published by BOA last fall. Reviewer Patrick James Dunagan says, "...this collection clues in those not already in the know. Giannelli pulls poems primarily out from the latter half of the poet's life, reproducing little of anything that has already appeared in English translation while covering a two-decade span (1965-87) of publications." Marosa di Giorgio was born in Salto, Uruguay, in 1932. Descended from Italian...

Isaiah Vianese of Rattle praises Ellen Bass' Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), calling it a "collection about love, family, and empathy told in (mostly) first-person narratives. Bass' voice in these poems is warm and kind, as she considers how to be caring and gentle." Vianese admittedly finds "comfort" in Bass' honesty, especially in her ties to love, sex, and religion. "Many of the poet's pieces focus on sex ... she sometimes uses the erotic as a way to understand larger questions about religion, love, and mortality. This use of sex as a lens for viewing grand subjects is best seen in...