Archive for September, 2011

There will be an open submission period for the Lannan Translations Series from October 1-October 31, 2011. We ask that you read and follow the guidelines provided on our website before submitting:

[Lannan Translations Series]

The Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico annually funds two new collections of contemporary international poetry published by BOA Editions.  The funds support production costs and author and translator royalties. We think of Lannan as the quiet heroes of the contemporary literary scene for their support of poetry and the art of translation. They also house some of the best audio and video literary archives available on-line. Find out more about the Lannan Foundation here: http://www.lannan.org/

The most recent release from BOA’s translation series is House Inspections by Carsten René Nielsen, translated from the Danish with an Introduction by David Keplinger. With a dozen poems previously published in the Paris Review, Carsten René Nielsen is already a familiar name to U.S. poetry readers. These dark prose poems – reminiscent of Charles Simic – map out a uniquely European territory with chilling, cinematic clarity.

Here  is a list of other books published through BOA’s Lannan Translations Selection Series 2002-2011:

The Siege, poems by Ljuba Merlina Bortolani
Translation by Michael Palma
Introduction by Alfredo de Palchi
(Bilingual edition: Italian and English)

Engravings Torn from Insomnia, poems by Olga Orozco
Translation with an Introduction by Mary Crow
(Bilingual edition: Spanish and English)

The Hiddenness of the World, poems by Gerard Martin
Translated with an Introduction by Bertrand Mathieu
(Bilingual edition: French and English)

Miracle Maker: The Selected Poems of Fadhil Al-Azzawi
Translated with an Introduction by Khaled Mattawa

Before and After the Fall, poems by Sandor Csoori
Translated with an Introduction by Len Roberts

Ithaca, poems by Francisca Aguirre
Translated with an Introduction by Ana Valverde Osan
(Bilingual edition: Spanish and English)

A Matter of Blue, poems by Jean-Michel Maulpoix
Translated with an Introduction by Dawn Cornelio
(Bilingual edition: French and English)

Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China
Translated with an Introduction by Jeanne Larsen

Probable Lives, poems by Felipe Benitez Reyes
Translated with an Introduction by Aaron Zaritzky
(Bilingual edition: Spanish and English)

Flowers of a Moment, poems by Ko Un
Translated by Brother Anthony, Young-moo Kim, and Gary Gach
Preface by Ko Un

The Clean Shirt of It, poems by Paulo Henriques Britto
Translated with an Introduction by Idra Novey
(Bilingual edition: Portuguese and English)

I Don’t Believe in Ghosts, poems by Moikom Zeqo
Translated with an Introduction by Wayne Miller
(Bilingual edition: Albanian and English)

Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs, poems by Adonis
Translated with an Introduction by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard

The Hymns of Job and Other Poems, poems by Maya Bejerano
Translated from the Hebrew with an Introduction by Tsipi Keller

Dark Things poems by Novica Tadic
Translated with an Introduction by Charles Simic

Praises & Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic
Poems by Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Angela Hernandez Nunez, and, Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo. Translated with an Introduction by Judith Kerman

Book of the Edge poems by Ece Temelkuran
Translated from the Turkish with an Introduction by Deniz Perin

 The Book of Things poems by Ales Steger
Translated from the Slovenian with an Introduction by Brian Henry

Remnants of Another Age poems by Nikola Madzirov
Translated from the Macedonian by Peggy and Graham W. Reid, Magdalena Horvat and Adam Reed with an Introduction by Carolyn Forché

 

(BOA Author Adam McOmber)

In his review of Adam McOmber’s “This New and Poisonous Air,” Gabriel Blackwell of HTMLgiant.com, focuses on what it means to impart our selves on to empty vessels of our own creation. Blackwell argues that works of art do not wholly exist without our understanding of the artist.

“When we make reference to the ‘Mona Lisa,’” Blackwell explains, “It is only rarely as a stand-in for its namesake, Lisa del Giocondo. It is the artist we want to speak of, the portraitist rather than his subject, for he is what we see in the portrait, not her.”

Blackwell’s review explores this process of projection both within the narrative itself and the experience of the reader – how do the protagonists project themselves onto their art within each story and likewise how does the reader fill the narrative with themselves?

Blackwell continues to praise “This New and Poisonous Air,” explaining that the “skeptical use of the fantastic in McOmber’s fiction seems at first a reference to Poe, to Poe’s blend of the fantastic and the real. but Poe’s was often only a science of spite, sugar to make the bitter pill of his satire swallowable. McOmber’s is the science of melancholy. It has the lyric at its heart, loss at its core.”

The entirety of this review is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. It is an incredibly intelligent close reading of what is a truly wonderful collection of short stories.

so please, click here for the full review

and/or here for a copy of “This New and Poisonous Air” and enjoy yourself.

Seriously, these two links make it suspiciously easy.

Even more photos from this great night!

Many thanks to all those who came out to make this year’s Dine & Rhyme a huge success!

The readings this year, to quote one audience member, were “awesome” (before awesome he used another word we can’t reprint here). Keetje Kuipers began the readings with selections from Beautiful in the Mouth, Aracelis Girmay read from Kingdom Animalia, and Michael Waters read from various collections, offering along the way some fascinating anecdotes, such as an account of his accidental entry into shark-infested waters.

Below are a few pictures from the dinner and auction. More to come soon on our Facebook page.

BOA author Aracelis Girmay

We here at BOA could not be more excited to announce that Aracelis Girmay will be featured in two upcoming events hosted by the Poetry Society of America in the next few months.

Girmay is the author of two collections of poetry; Teeth (2007) and most recently, Kingdom Animalia, which received the 2011 Isabella Gardner Award.

On November 8, in Cambridge, MA, Girmay will be joined by fellow poets Rosa Alcala and Eduardo C. Corral for the premier of the LATINO/A POETRY NOW reading series. The series is set to begin in Cambridge, MA and proceed on to Washington, D.C., Saint Paul, MN, South Bend, IN, and beyond.

Free and open to the public.

Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street.

On December 5, in Washington, D.C., is the Emily Dickinson Tribute, where Girmay will hold a discussion regarding Emily Dickinson and her work. The conversation will be introduced and moderated by the executive Director of the Poetry Society of America, Alice Quinn.

Admission is $15

Call 202-544-7077 for tickets.

For more information click here

These events are great chances to listen in on one of the best and brightest up and coming poets, so don’t miss them!

Matthew Guenette of the Southern Indiana Review’s “First Takes with Matthew Guenette” asks himself “What is in the work of a title?” After reading Waters’ tenth collection of poems, Guenette finds the poet’s ability to provoke tension from diction something worth turning over and over again while considering both words of the title. The “work of this title,” as Guenette writes, conclusively demonstrates the mastery of word choice and form to be found in each poem of the collection.

Guenette sees the four sections of Gospel Night as individual guides for understanding Waters’ overall explanations of worldly and warring violence, his tonal move into the mind of the young artist in the poems of part III, and the wise and up to date persona he uses uses in Section IV.

Guenette reads Gospel Night as a book of self-reflexive pieces where the poet is fascinated by form, making poems that exist for themselves. And finally thinking over the reason for making such independently existing poems, Guenette sees the idea of order in the collection as one that comes from a poet on his tenth book with still many more miles to go.

Gospel Night can be found here in the BOA store.

University of Southern Indiana– First Takes with Matthew Guenette

Today’s CITY Newspaper article concerning the upcoming BOA event– the Dine & Rhyme on Sunday September 18th — is not simply a flyer or advertisement, but a reminder of BOA’s legacy and the  higher importance of Poetry. Thank you to CITY for sharing the news about BOA, past, present and future.

The CITY Article with the wonderful BOA history can be found here.

This year’s Dine & Rhyme is specially themed in honor of our 35th anniversary.  The event will start at 3PM with a poetry reading featuring Michael Waters, Keetje Kuipers and Aracelis Girmay. The reading will be followed by a 6PM reception, dinner, and silent auction across the street from the Memorial Art Gallery at Good Luck Restaurant (50 Anderson Ave).

Tickets for the poetry reading and book signing are $20 in advance and 25$ at the door. Tickets for the reading and reception dinner are 125$ and must be purchased in advance. For orders and info contact Melissa Hall at hall@boaeditions.org or call (585) 546-3410 ext. 11.

Adam McOmber, BOA poet

NewPages Book Reviews had high words for Adam McOmber’s most recent short story collection, This New and Poisonous Air, which blends historical fiction with fantasy and the macabre.

NewPages critic, Patricia Contino praises McOmber’s eye for detail as well as his sense of storytelling, stating that “every page has a paragraph or more worth savoring.” However, “McOmber’s gift for detail never infringes on the narrative.”

Stories such as “Fall, Orpheum” – in which “a small town movie palace becomes the temple for an entire town’s devotion and sacrifice” – not only exemplify McOmber’s sense of narrative balance, but have “the power of capturing celluloid and real life.”

As the review highlights, the strength and refreshing nature of  McOmber’s style are not showcased in just one or two stories but are consistently prevalent throughout This New and Poisonous Air. Each of the protagonists lead “ordinary lives with secrets and daydreams until something distorts their world.” And while some things are better left unexplored, these varied and innovative encounters ” further sharpen a need to know,” according to Contino.

McOmber utilizes his time with the reader by focusing on ideas such as “fantasy and reality” and succeeds in revealing the false dichotomy between them. This New and Poisonous Air, Contino explains, “proves tenfold, those two realms go together—and their meeting ground is neither safe nor predictable.”

This New and Poisonous Air is available here

To read the full review follow the link here