BOA Blog

Ko Un's Flowers of a Moment is currently being featured in the Summer 2012 issue of Ceries Press, in an essay by Melissa Kwasny entitled "The Flower Artist." In her essay, Kwasny explores the nature and identity of the flower in and as art, referencing a diverse canon of floral study that includes Charles Baudelaire, the German mystic poet Novalis, Morris Graves, Piet Mondrian, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, and BOA's own poets Ko Un and Adonis. Kwasny describes how the flower is a conduit and reflection of human experiences, acting as a point through which we both access and view what Baudelaire...

As the majority of you probably already know from our copious number of notifications on the blog, Tuesday, June 26th featured  BOA's Evening of Jazz, Poetry, and Art at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. For those who were able to attend, we hope you enjoyed it and thanks for coming! For those who had to walk the dog, wash the car, etc.-- not to worry! We have some great footage of the night's highlights freshly available on Youtube for your viewing pleasure! There are two parts to the video, featuring readings by BOA poet Sean Thomas Dougherty, artwork by Sarah...

Ira Sadoff is already receiving sparkling reviews for his recent True Faith, just released this past spring! In "That's Where My God Is: A Review of True Faith," Anne Webster of The Chattahoochee Review has called Sadoff's collection "an unflinching exploration of himself and his life," specifically referring to his relationship with faith, mortality, disillusionment, and "the search for meaning." Webster goes on to describe the work's three sections, which move from Sadoff's childhood past and the factors that influenced his addressing of religion, to exploration of major events in his spiritual life, to "present-day influences and his resulting skepticism"...

To our readers, an apology-- BOA has been giving you so many good reads lately, your eyes are probably exhausted. To make amends, we offer this great audio discussion from the Poetry Foundation on the late W. D. Snodgrass! The discussion, titled "People Don't Read This Way Anymore," explores the late, great W.D. Snodgrass's formalism, dark humor, and passionate reading style. It is part of the Poetry Off the Shelf series, in which Producer Curtis Fox and Ernest Hilbert examine the world of contemporary American poetry with readings by poets, interviews with critics, and short poetry documentaries. So go ahead-...

A couple days ago, Minnesota Reader posted a review of Reindeer Camps by Bart Sutter. The author of the review, Mike Link, warns of the difficulty to write reviews of poetry, but that doesn't stop him from giving a thorough and honest rundown of the book that we'd love to share with you! The review discusses the book in its sections, or "chapters if it was prose." The first section examines darker things, the ones that "challenge our perspectives." There were certainly tons of quotes from the book, always handy with a line or two to support one of the...