BOA Blog

When the comfort of human connection falls short in a world that feels increasingly disconnected, Austin alerts us to the pleasure of music, language, and even, uniquely, fashion. One of my favorite poems in this collection is Ode on Symone’s Do-rag, in which he writes “I am yards of blue satin.” Not only is this comparison almost eerily lovely, but it proves Austin’s lyrical mastery by reversing the mechanisms in the commonly used literary machine of personification.

Splashed Things by Leigh Lucas is a raw, intimate poetry collection that follows the speaker’s journey through grief following the suicide of her ex-boyfriend. With striking candor, the speaker allows readers to step into her grieving mind, laying bare her journey to healing. 

Charles Rafferty is the author of 14 poetry books and chapbooks, most recently The Appendectomy Grin (BOA, 2025), A Cluster of Noisy Planets (BOA, 2021), The Problem With Abundance (Grayson Books, 2019) Something an Atheist Might Bring Up at a Cocktail Party (Mayapple Press, 2018), and The Smoke of Horses (BOA Editions, 2017). His stories have been collected in Saturday Night at Magellan’s (Fomite Press, 2013) and Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Ploughshares; Prairie Schooner; Rhino; and The Southern Review. He has received grants...

The Appendectomy Grin by Charles Rafferty offers a sobering view of our modern world, or more specifically, the ways in which it seems intent on destroying itself. Meditative yet witty, this collection of prose poetry leaves no leaf unturned when discussing the willful separation of humans from nature and our eternal demand that the natural world make space for us. 

Laura Read is the author of The Serious World (Boa Editions, 2025), But She Is Also Jane (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023, winner of the Juniper Prize); Dresses from the Old Country (Boa Editions, 2018); Instructions for my Mother’s Funeral (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, selected by Dorianne Laux), and The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You (winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, 2011). Laura has been teaching creative writing, literature, and composition at Spokane Falls Community College since 1998 and poetry in the MFA program at...