In Joseph Salvatore's To Assume a Pleasing Shape, a collection of short fiction which debuts in November, "Answers were not given. Answers will not be given. You understand as much as any of us understands- and more than most of us could even give a hoot." ( from "Everlovin'", which is less about lovin' and more about the remnants of the phrase one usually fits the word into). "Sexy and smart, sad an uproarious, Salvatore's stories work a glorious alchemy, brewing a warlock's potion of influences ranging from David Foster Wallace, to W.G. Sebald, to John Barth. 'Reduction' is one of those magical tales that leaves you baffled as to how you have managed to live- to survive!- this long without it." (J.C. Hallman, from the back cover) These are pieces of an intimate, somehow closer-to-ourselves reading of life in all its myriad textures and temperatures, brief astonishing little windows in which he grabs so quickly our attention and innate trust of the truth of the world he paints that we can't help but nod yes, yes, this is how it would be. And life with all its questions and non-answers and fumbles and contested, gray-area, uncertain victories is there, undeniably there.
Carsten René Nielsen, whose prose poems have been translated from the Danish by translator David Keplinger, has already garnered an unexpectedly large audience in the States for a translated author. His new collection, House Inspections, which will be available from BOA in mid-November, treads the line between realistic, almost nostalgic views of everyday life and the magically incongruous. Writes Keplinger in his introduction, "While the poems focus on the interior, referencing his city, his neighborhood, his small apartment, he is attracting readers from farther and farther away. ... The question comes up repeatedly in the title poem of this collection, calling us on a mission to inspect, interrogate these moments, these houses of insight, as policemen would, so that ;even at night, while the running lights of an airplace inch across the sky, the questions can be heard as a hardly audible mumbling in the darkness between houses: 'What... is... here?'"
Janice Harrington's second collection of poetry with us (her first, Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and BOA's 5th annual A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Award) focuses on the lives and moments, most of them quiet and lingeringly introspective, of the nursing home. Though Harrington does not include an introduction or any note to detail her own truths and her history as a nursing home worker during her college years, The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home has an astonishing truth to it that cannot be denied or ignored, whether or not one knows the history behind the poems collected in it. It is better perhaps not to ask how Harrington has become privy to the day-to-day workings and livings and feelings of the care of the elderly- represented on both sides, from both the eyes of workers and residents- and to simply know that the images painted here are all at the same time tender, unflinching, compassionate, and uneasily prophetic. Writes Martha Collins, "Janice N. Harrington's astonishingly moving second book is an eye-opening celebration of both sides of a relationship that has rarely if ever been so deeply examined in our literature."
To Assume a Pleasing Shape is available NOW for order here, House Inspections here, and The Hands of Strangers here.
Another Tempting Tidbit; Sneak Peeks at Fall 2011 Part the Second!
So a few weeks ago we gave you a little bit of a teaser with previews of three of BOA's new books coming out this fall. But if somehow, somehow, that wasn't enough to get you psyched up for the upcoming literary season, here are the three more which should break through that thick, calloused shell of yours and open to your eyes the wonderful things which are to come. Please keep in mind that although they haven't hit stores yet, all of our fall titles can be purchased NOW directly from the secure BOA Editions bookstore.
In Joseph Salvatore's To Assume a Pleasing Shape, a collection of short fiction which debuts in November, "Answers were not given. Answers will not be given. You understand as much as any of us understands- and more than most of us could even give a hoot." ( from "Everlovin'", which is less about lovin' and more about the remnants of the phrase one usually fits the word into). "Sexy and smart, sad an uproarious, Salvatore's stories work a glorious alchemy, brewing a warlock's potion of influences ranging from David Foster Wallace, to W.G. Sebald, to John Barth. 'Reduction' is one of those magical tales that leaves you baffled as to how you have managed to live- to survive!- this long without it." (J.C. Hallman, from the back cover) These are pieces of an intimate, somehow closer-to-ourselves reading of life in all its myriad textures and temperatures, brief astonishing little windows in which he grabs so quickly our attention and innate trust of the truth of the world he paints that we can't help but nod yes, yes, this is how it would be. And life with all its questions and non-answers and fumbles and contested, gray-area, uncertain victories is there, undeniably there.
Carsten René Nielsen, whose prose poems have been translated from the Danish by translator David Keplinger, has already garnered an unexpectedly large audience in the States for a translated author. His new collection, House Inspections, which will be available from BOA in mid-November, treads the line between realistic, almost nostalgic views of everyday life and the magically incongruous. Writes Keplinger in his introduction, "While the poems focus on the interior, referencing his city, his neighborhood, his small apartment, he is attracting readers from farther and farther away. ... The question comes up repeatedly in the title poem of this collection, calling us on a mission to inspect, interrogate these moments, these houses of insight, as policemen would, so that ;even at night, while the running lights of an airplace inch across the sky, the questions can be heard as a hardly audible mumbling in the darkness between houses: 'What... is... here?'"
Janice Harrington's second collection of poetry with us (her first, Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and BOA's 5th annual A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Award) focuses on the lives and moments, most of them quiet and lingeringly introspective, of the nursing home. Though Harrington does not include an introduction or any note to detail her own truths and her history as a nursing home worker during her college years, The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home has an astonishing truth to it that cannot be denied or ignored, whether or not one knows the history behind the poems collected in it. It is better perhaps not to ask how Harrington has become privy to the day-to-day workings and livings and feelings of the care of the elderly- represented on both sides, from both the eyes of workers and residents- and to simply know that the images painted here are all at the same time tender, unflinching, compassionate, and uneasily prophetic. Writes Martha Collins, "Janice N. Harrington's astonishingly moving second book is an eye-opening celebration of both sides of a relationship that has rarely if ever been so deeply examined in our literature."
To Assume a Pleasing Shape is available NOW for order here, House Inspections here, and The Hands of Strangers here.
In Joseph Salvatore's To Assume a Pleasing Shape, a collection of short fiction which debuts in November, "Answers were not given. Answers will not be given. You understand as much as any of us understands- and more than most of us could even give a hoot." ( from "Everlovin'", which is less about lovin' and more about the remnants of the phrase one usually fits the word into). "Sexy and smart, sad an uproarious, Salvatore's stories work a glorious alchemy, brewing a warlock's potion of influences ranging from David Foster Wallace, to W.G. Sebald, to John Barth. 'Reduction' is one of those magical tales that leaves you baffled as to how you have managed to live- to survive!- this long without it." (J.C. Hallman, from the back cover) These are pieces of an intimate, somehow closer-to-ourselves reading of life in all its myriad textures and temperatures, brief astonishing little windows in which he grabs so quickly our attention and innate trust of the truth of the world he paints that we can't help but nod yes, yes, this is how it would be. And life with all its questions and non-answers and fumbles and contested, gray-area, uncertain victories is there, undeniably there.
Carsten René Nielsen, whose prose poems have been translated from the Danish by translator David Keplinger, has already garnered an unexpectedly large audience in the States for a translated author. His new collection, House Inspections, which will be available from BOA in mid-November, treads the line between realistic, almost nostalgic views of everyday life and the magically incongruous. Writes Keplinger in his introduction, "While the poems focus on the interior, referencing his city, his neighborhood, his small apartment, he is attracting readers from farther and farther away. ... The question comes up repeatedly in the title poem of this collection, calling us on a mission to inspect, interrogate these moments, these houses of insight, as policemen would, so that ;even at night, while the running lights of an airplace inch across the sky, the questions can be heard as a hardly audible mumbling in the darkness between houses: 'What... is... here?'"
Janice Harrington's second collection of poetry with us (her first, Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and BOA's 5th annual A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Award) focuses on the lives and moments, most of them quiet and lingeringly introspective, of the nursing home. Though Harrington does not include an introduction or any note to detail her own truths and her history as a nursing home worker during her college years, The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home has an astonishing truth to it that cannot be denied or ignored, whether or not one knows the history behind the poems collected in it. It is better perhaps not to ask how Harrington has become privy to the day-to-day workings and livings and feelings of the care of the elderly- represented on both sides, from both the eyes of workers and residents- and to simply know that the images painted here are all at the same time tender, unflinching, compassionate, and uneasily prophetic. Writes Martha Collins, "Janice N. Harrington's astonishingly moving second book is an eye-opening celebration of both sides of a relationship that has rarely if ever been so deeply examined in our literature."
To Assume a Pleasing Shape is available NOW for order here, House Inspections here, and The Hands of Strangers here.
- Categories: BOA News