BOA Blog

Want to know what publishers like BOA are looking for in a manuscript? Dying to know more about your favorite independent press? In a fascinating (and humorous) interview, BOA's publisher Peter Conners discusses with Aspen Matis of the Brooklyn Rail about just what makes BOA, BOA. In addition to questions of funding, public support of the arts and humanities, and surviving in a less-than-thriving economy, the two discuss BOA's further promotion of little-known, necessary manuscripts through the release of e-books, and what "progress" in the digital landscape means for the fate of poetry and text. The balance between accessibility and...

More news for Naomi Shihab Nye's Transfer! The Arab American National Museum (AANM) will honor Nye with the 2012 Arab American Book Award's "Honorable Mention for Poetry" on Saturday, September 29th in Dearborn, Michigan. The AANM, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit human services and cultural organization committed to the preservation and presentation of Arab American history, culture, and contributions. Their unique national literary competition was created to draw attention to books "that preserve and advance the understanding, knowledge, and resources of the Arab American community by celebrating the thoughts and lives of Arab...

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="author photo courtesy of doriannelaux.com"][/caption] It's official! This year's A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize will be judged by Dorianne Laux, BOA poet and author of five widely-circulated collections. Over the course of her literary career, Laux has received two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two Fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been selected for a variety of anthologies including the Best of APR, the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and the Best of the Net, and has been translated into nine languages. Laux has also...

In a recent interview with Matthew Guenette for Southern Indiana Review, poet Michael Waters discussed his own stylistic progression and some of the factors that he feels influence his writing. When asked about the evolution of his own aesthetic, Waters stressed that structurally, he has moved from loose free verse to a style that centers "more and more on the integrity of the line... One reason I haven't attempted much prose fiction is that the sentence as an integral unit interests me much less than the line does." The line, Waters continues, is an essential, complete component of the poem,...

"Have you noticed how clean and glistening the cobblestones are after the rain? Real works of art! And flowers? No words can describe them. One can only exclaim “AH!” in admiration. You must learn to understand the ‘AH!” of things.” --Matsuo Basho [caption id="attachment_1786" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="author photo courtesy of jacketmagazine.com"][/caption] In the writings of 17th century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, poetry exists as  a process of recognition and transformation: of Oku no Hosomichi, "the narrow path to the interior" that is accessed through the subtle, delicate experiences rooting us to the present. No better exploration of these experiences can...