BOA Blog

In honor of Mother's Day this weekend, we've selected some great books to explore for the occasion. Some of these collections are by mothers, some of mothers, and all portray the importance, influences, and challenges of the role. You and Yours, poems by Naomi Shihab Nye (2005) Sewing, Knitting, Crocheting (Mother's Day 1999) A small striped sleeve in her lap, navy and white, needles carefully whipping in yarn from two sides. She reminds me of the wide-angled women filled with calm I pretended I was related to in crowds. In the next seat a yellow burst of wool grows into...

Image courtesy of The New York Times Book Review | 5 May 2013 Beloved poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Li-Young Lee have been garnering big attention in recent media. In last Sunday's The New York Times Book Review, American poet and critic Robert Bly lists both Naomi Shihab Nye and Li-Young Lee as two of his "favorite poets of all time." Naomi Shihab Nye is the author of BOA titles Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You and Yours (2005), and Transfer (2011); Li-Young Lee is the author of BOA titles Rose (1986), The City in Which I Love You (1990), Book...

BOA poet Ryan Teitman, author of the recent Litany for the City (2012), has his poem "Archipelago" featured as a Read Selection for the new issue of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. We thought we'd share it with you. Congratulations, Ryan! Archipelago Ryan Teitman A bird is a kind of island. In flight, a flock is called an archipelago. At rest, a peninsula. When two flocks meet, they are called a communion. Used in a sentence: Two flocks met and became a communion. A surgeon opens a body with a scalpel. A scalpel is a kind...

Ira Sadoff’s True Faith (BOA, 2012) is both "provocative and mature,” according to Gently Read Literature. The collection wrestles with notions of “god, country, and self,” and it is through explorations of these themes that Sadoff becomes a “skilled craftsman, imparting his vision—and his questions—in perfectly sculpted bursts of powerful language.” True Faith openly admits to a negative, sometimes “derisive” tone, but not without purpose. In an attempt to “reach the core of the human mind and heart,” Sadoff interrogates "ideas of faith," juxtaposes a “young man’s innocence” with a “naïve and sleeping America,” boldly exposes our “inability to communicate...

As we close the chapter on this year’s National Poetry Month, Kazim Ali shares a few words about poetry’s importance in everyday life, and reads his poem “Ocean Street” on NPR's Weekend Edition. Likening poetry to the human body, Ali says: “The line of poetry teaches us about the length of breath, and the way energy moves through a poem teaches us about the way breath and blood move through the human body.” In other words, poetry is a way of living. Ali is the author of The Fortieth Day (BOA, 2008), and co-translator of BOA's forthcoming Iranian translation The...