BOA Blog

In his recent Los Angeles Review essay "The State of Black Poetry," Mitchell L. H. Douglas writes an extensive review of Aracelis Girmay's Kingdom Animalia, calling it a "masterful collection" with poems that "refuse to be taken for granted." Douglas specifically notes the collection's many references to hands and mouths, indicating that hands represent "power and control," while mouths—more complex—show intimacy. He aptly uses poems "Science" and "On Living" as examples, in which the wind takes us apart "with its blue hands," and the death of a mother means that her "mouth is gone." In Girmay's second collection, which Douglas...

Craig Morgan Teicher is high on On the Seawall's list of recommended new and recent collections for his latest, To Keep Love Blurry. "Teicher is gifted in his plainspoken articulations of a world steeped in disequilibrium for the child and parent alike. But disequilibrium does not engender despair. Teicher’s many vertiginous shifts do not leave us in a landscape of ennui, though a summary of the book’s subjects might suggest this — the loss of his mother while still a child, the fear of failed artistic accomplishment, the often inscrutable responsibilities of fatherhood and marriage. But such fierce challenges, such...

Mike Walker of Coal Hill Review offers remarkable praise for The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, commending both BOA and Ms. Clifton on the vision for this landmark volume and what it is all about. "Looking at this book as I removed it from its packaging, it was clear that BOA pulled out all the stops on this one, producing a beautiful volume that even has the now-rare bookmark ribbon one used to encounter more often in high-quality books, especially those on some sort of mission... BOA’s offerings are always exacting, pithy, and urgent books of poetry and short...

Most people know Richard Foerster as a poet whose BOA books include Trillium (1998), Double Going (2002), and The Burning of Troy (2006). However a look inside most any BOA book on your shelf would reveal Richard Foerster as the typesetter behind BOA's beautiful finished collections. To use a rock-n-roll analogy, Richard is "the fifth Beatle" at BOA - a typesetter and proofreader extraordinaire who makes sure our books are as beautiful looking as the poems are beautiful to read. Richard recently gave an extensive interview with Connotation Press about his life and poetry. His responses revealed his perspective on...

It's been an amazing year for poetry and on top on our list has been the publication of The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. We're thrilled that the book has also been named at the top of Publishers Weekly's list! PW has just announced that The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton is one of their picks for The Best Books of 2012. In their announcement, PW describes the book as "One of the most significant books of poetry to come out in years, this is the life's work of a major poet who wrote with powerful anger about the...