BOA Blog

Three amazing BOA poets are featured in the April 2016 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.Aracelis Girmay's new Spring 2016 poetry collection the black maria is called a "recently published gem of the genre" in the magazine's "Reading Room" section. According to O Magazine, "Her every loss—she calls them estrangements—is a yearning for connection across time and place; her every fragment is a bulwark against ruin.”Legendary actor and comedian Bill Murray chose poems by BOA poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Lucille Clifton as two of his favorites in honor of National Poetry Month.About Nye's poem "Famous," Murray says "It's not...

Marsha de la O's new collection Antidote for Night was recently featured in the Los Angeles Review.The review focuses on the construction of de la O’s poetry, which often strays from normalcy: "Faithful to the advice of Robert Bly, that early translator of the Spanish-language surrealists and advocate of 'leaping poetry,' de la O braids narrative, weaving rhythm and melody into un-ravel-able wholes. 'Whistle Keeps on Blowing,' a meditation on the life and art of jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, begins in the middle, jumps to the end, circles back to the beginning, and then returns to the middle, that apotheosis of...

NewPages praises Rick Bursky’s collection I’m No Longer Troubled by the Extravagance in a new review.Bursky’s poetry is called a “tour de force of poetic guile with a profound understanding of what it feels like to yearn for something no longer there.” The poems “My heart is a rumor” and “My Uncanny Resemblance to a Young Sean Connery” are highlighted in the review, and are called “powerful” and “astounding.”According to reviewer Heath Bowen: “Bursky's collection of poems, titled I'm No Longer Troubled by the Extravagance, kept me moving in all sorts of directions. His facile accession of language, banal if...

Many thanks to Rebbeca Rafferty and City Newspaper for this wonderful piece on BOA's 40th anniversary!BOA EDITIONS CELEBRATES 40 YEARSCity Newspaper | February 24, 2016BOA Editions' story began much like that of other creative endeavors: When an intrepid individual identified a lack of opportunity, he went out and created it himself. One of the longest-running independent presses in the nation, BOA was founded on July 4, 1976, by A. Poulin, Jr., who was a Brockport professor at the time as well as a poet and translator. BOA began small, and at 40 years, it remains a tiny operation. But the...

As we celebrate Black History Month, we remember and honor monumental contributions made throughout our nation's tumultuous history—but it is almost impossible to do so without thinking of Lucille Clifton and the light she brought to the world. Nearly four years after releasing The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, BOA is proud to announce that the complete collection—magnificent in every sense of the word—is now available electronically, making it accessible to more people and in more ways.This volume—which includes all of the poems Lucille Clifton published in book form during her lifetime, as well as groupings of previously uncollected...