BOA Blog

In the new issue of Fogged Clarity, poet and critic Scott Hightower takes a smart look at Jeanne Marie Beaumont's new collection, Burning of the Three Fires:  "Burning of the Three Fires is Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s third book. The overriding characteristic of Beaumont’s poems is their exuberant exploration of poetic possibilities; i.e., variation. Beaumont is interested in the modal possibilities of poetry, she is no dabbler. Her interest is smart, abiding – and, ultimately for the reader, rewarding." Read the complete review here [Fogged Clarity on Burning of the Three Fires] [caption id="attachment_1137" align="aligncenter" width="265" caption="Jeanne Marie Beaumont. BOA poet."][/caption]

Latern Review - the journal of "Asian American Poetry Unbound" - reviews Barbara Jane Reyes' Diwata for their December 20 blog: "In Poeta in San Francisco, Barbara Jane Reyes’ previous book, diwata was someone “elders say” had once “walked on earth” before the “the nailed god came” (30). These are the traces and rumors from which the titular Diwata of her latest book is resurrected. Then, like slippery oral art, like slips of the tongue, creation stories about men, women, and diwata—a god or spirit in Philippine mythology—are made up and told again and again. The poems in Diwata draw...

Cradle Book comes off its mention in the New Yorker as one of the “Eleven Best Poetry Books of 2010” with a lovely review in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Among other things, the review points out: “Ours is a world in which fables are uncomfortable inhabitants. Craig Morgan Teicher, the 2007 Colorado Prize-winning poet for "Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems," knows this. He knows we are unlikely to fall for (or follow) some pithy statement about how we ought to live our lives. Instead, in "Cradle Book," he leaves the reader, usually in some charged darkness, wondering what to...

Kryssa Schemmerling reviews Jeanne Marie Beaumont's new collection, Burning of the Three Fires, in the current issue of BigCityLit. Does she like it?  "Dolls, brides, fairytale heroines, and anorexics all make appearances, as Beaumont offers multiple views of womanhood from a variety of angles. Rather than overwhelming us with personal information, the poet dons various masks, peeking out from behind them to offer measured, tantalizing glimpses of what we imagine to be her inner state." Read the whole review here [BigCityLit review of Burning of the Three Fires] [caption id="attachment_1137" align="aligncenter" width="265" caption="Jeanne Marie Beaumont. BOA poet."][/caption]

While everyone laments the decline of print review outlets (us included... especially newspapers!) Gently Read Literature has stepped up to the plate and delivered a monthly feast of in-depth reviews of poetry and fiction. I emphasize "in-depth" because these are no one paragraph blurb reviews. GRL consistently delivers thoughtful analysis and reviews carrying the weight their subjects (the books) demand. In their current issue, poet and critic Kurt Brown reviews Dark Things (BOA, 2009) poems by Novica Tadic, translated from the Serbian with an Introduction by Charles Simic.    Here's a little taste of how Brown views Tadic's poetry: "Tadic’s poems arise from a child-like pleasure in the grotesque,...