BOA Blog

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Gratitude by poet, translator, and publisher Sam Hamill. Sam passed away earlier this year at his home in Anacortes, WA. He was 74. Salutation, Late Autumn, 1991 It is late afternoon, the beginning of the darkest month of the year, evening trembling in the shadows. I stroke the fire, heat a small pot of sake, and open for the first time Bashō's Narrow Road to the Interior fresh from the printer.             ...

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's Cenzontle is one of a handful of poetry titles recommended on NPR's annual Book Concierge Guide to 2018's Great Reads.NPR poetry critic Tess Taylor praises Castillo's lyric verses and poems that confound easy boundaries: "These poem shapes linger in the mind long after the book is shut."The librarians at the New York Public Library also included Cenzontle on their annual list of The New York Public Library's 2018 Best Books for Adults. When selecting Cenzontle for NBC Latino's Summer Reading List earlier this year, Rigoberto Gonzales wrote that "Cenzontle is a book that speaks with striking language about an experience that’s being presented in public...

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Walking the Dog's Shadow by Deborah Brown. A Family Story Like that mouse who clung to the cabin wall by its pale, delicate nails, its shapely knuckles curved tight, and then its tail flicking side to side like a tongue over its plump thumb of a body, as if joining the argument, clawing its way up, swaying until, in the morning, the soft collapsed body of the mouse, stuck half in, half out of the wall, as...

Happy Thanksgiving, Dear Readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week poem is a special selection from the anthology Appetite: Food as Metaphor, edited by Phyllis Stowell and Jeanne Foster. We are ever grateful for the passion, the community, and the generosity of our readers, authors, board members, and supporters. We invite you to share your passion and generosity with our community this week by sharing your favorite Thanksgiving poems on social media this week with the hashtag #PoetryGratitudes. Family Reunion By Maxine Kumin The week in August you come home,...

Greetings, BOA readers! I'm Mckayla, one of the fall interns at BOA Editions. It was my great pleasure to sit down over email with Poulin Prize-winner and Iraq War veteran Hugh Martin to ask him a few questions about his experience serving overseas as well as his newest book, In Country.   When did you write the first poem for this collection? Did you start writing any of these poems while you were serving in Iraq? How has your process changed since you started writing these poems? While in Iraq, I did not write any poems but did keep a journal with very detailed...