BOA Blog

Jillian Weise, author of the forthcoming The Book of Goodbyes (BOA, Fall 2013), is already receiving praise for her new poetry collection in an NPR Books 2013 poetry preview: "...make sure to check out The Book of Goodbyes by Jillian Weise, whose debut, The Amputee's Guide to Sex, was that and much more. This second collection is a swirling set of love poems to a beloved as omnipresent as he is illusive." Winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, The Book of Goodbyes speaks to a certain deranged love that throws into question sex, legality, gender-politics, disability, and the end...

sorrow song for the eyes of the children, the last to melt, the last to vaporize, for the lingering eyes of the children, staring, the eyes of the children of buchenwald, of viet nam and johannesburg, for the eyes of the children of middle passage, for cherokee eyes, ethiopian eyes, russian eyes, american eyes, for all that remains of the children, their eyes, staring at us,      amazed to see the extraordinary evil in ordinary men.   --lucille clifton (1987)

Since the National Endowment for the Arts has officially announced its 2013 list of recipients for its $25,000 Creative Writing (Poetry) Fellowship Grant, BOA is proud to announce poet Ryan Teitman as one such recipient. Teitman's first poetry collection Litany for the City won him the 10th Annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (selected by Jane Hirshfield from more than 600 manuscripts), and was published by BOA this past spring. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. The NEA supports artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for...

Ira Sadoff's latest collection True Faith (BOA, 2012) is one of the Academy of American Poets' Notable Books of 2012! The collection of notable books was previously published in issue 43 of American Poet, the biannual journal of the Academy of American Poets. According to the Academy, Sadoff's eighth collection of poetry "poses questions about happiness and resilience," with poems that "often gesture towards a common humanity," and in which "moments of divinity emerge in unexpected places." The Academy aptly notes that "...to Sadoff, it is imagination that allows faith, fosters possibility, and evidences beauty," recalling his poem "For Beauty":...

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 has made it to Amazon's 2012 "Books for Her" Holiday Gift Guide! This landmark collection is the culmination of a 40-year career by one of America’s most revered poets, combining all of Lucille Clifton’s published collections with more than 60 previously unpublished poems. The unpublished pieces feature early poems from 1965-1969, a collection-in-progress entitled Book of Days, and a poignant selection of final poems. An insightful Foreword by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, and a comprehensive Afterword by noted poet Kevin Young, frame Clifton’s lifetime body of work, providing a definitive statement about...