BOA Blog

A zealous review for Bruce Beasley’s Theophobia (BOA, 2012)! In a Starred Review by Publishers Weekly this week, Bruce Beasley's newest collection Theophobia (now available at the BOA Bookstore) was highly praised, with claims that the book “outdoes his five prior collections with this spiky, thoughtful, elaborate, sometimes scary, sometimes funny set of verse essays, riffs, and meditations.” Theophobia, the latest of Beasley's postmodern spiritual devotions, is structured around the poetry series, "Pilgrim's Deviations."  PW notes that Beasley “wants answers, from divinity or from DNA, even if he believes that he will not get them, and so his variable, friable,...

In a recent review, Zenith City Weekly examined Barton Sutter's latest, The Reindeer Camps (BOA 2012), citing Sutter's rhythm-driven narrative style and quasi-autobiographical episodes that make his poetry so unique. The reviewer writes, "My favorites constitute slivers of memory, although ultimately whether they are autobiographical or creative inventions hardly matters to their validity or value." Regarding Sutter's "account" of reindeer herding in Siberia, the reviewer continues, "the details make the poems real, which is more important than merely being true." Sutter's collection is a thought-provoking reconsideration of life's complexity, and more importantly, simplicity. Read more about this new work at...

Weston Cutter of Rain Taxi Book Reviews is calling Joe Salvatore's debut short-story collection To Assume a Pleasing Shape a "magnetic and propulsive" work of fiction. As Cutter puts it, the eleven stories in the collection are about "how life is more than simply a matter of keeping up 'spirit and spine,' how life is about living within the knowledge of our own end, and trying to love and share ourselves despite the casual doom of the day-to-day." According to Cutter, "Salvatore offers narratives that read and feel ultimately twinned... in most of the stories the reader must try to...

The Washington Post turned their book pages over to poetry yesterday and The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 was the star. Calling her works “small, precise, and chiseled,” the review aptly notes the synonymy between the personal and the political in Ms. Clifton’s poetry, as well as the complexity and intelligence thriving beneath a guise of simplicity. While her poetry is often associated with the African American experience, The Washington Post calls that characterization “limiting and unfair,” claiming that her later works extend “beyond the interests or history of any particular cultural community.” Instead, her innovative poetry seeks to...

[caption id="attachment_1894" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Now available at the BOA Bookstore!"][/caption] Dave Wood, former vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle and a columnist for River Falls Journal, is calling Barton Sutter's The Reindeer Camps "a breath of fresh air in the poetry world." Citing Sutter's playful mastery of more traditional style, Wood chose Sutter's latest work as a representation of excellent poetry on a national scale. The first Poet Laureate of Duluth, Sutter has crafted what is in Wood's eyes, "a cornucopia of razzle-dazzle old fashioned word-smithery." Read the full review on the River Falls Journal website, and be sure...