Stories from BOA Readers: #BOATurns40

I can’t always predict or anticipate my ideal reading experience, but when it happens, it’s unmistakable. I’ll read a phrase, a line, a string of images, even a single word––and for a few seconds, the world stops. Sometimes this manifests as a shift in the pit of my stomach, like a small bird stirring in my ribcage. Sometimes it’s my breath catching in my throat and clinging there, or my vision going bleary when I look up from the page. Sometimes it’s a feeling like I’m drifting upwards, as if my bones are air. In some ungraspable way the words...

Some of the books I remember most vividly are those I’ve never read—the ones that were read to me. Those early experiences of hearing someone interpret the words of an author through pacing and inflection taught me to bring something of myself to every book. Today, the books I find the most rewarding come from authors whose work somehow manages to listen back. To tell me, between the lines, that they hear me. That they’ve felt what I’ve felt. Seen what I’ve seen. Lost what I’ve lost. They string together words in ways that let me know I’m not alone....

When I was 15 I went on a road trip vacation with my best friend's family. I was at that age where I secretly wanted to run away from home, and my family was more than happy to lend me--in all my surly, self-consciously moody glory--to another family for a week. We drove from Long Island (NY) to Virginia Beach in their wood-paneled station wagon, which overheated at least twice on the way down. My friend and I spent most of our days down at the beach oogling cute surfers who were in town competing in the ECSC. On our...

I had my first paying job when I was 13 and books were my biggest splurge. It didn't take me long to realize that different presses have different flavors, and I instinctively gravitated towards BOA and Copper Canyon, both of whom still publish some of my favorite poetry today. BOA's Awake and What We Carry by Dorianne Laux were two of the first poetry collections I ever bought with my own money and I distinctly remember the thrill of realizing there was work out there that I loved. I've moved many times in the last couple decades but my books...