BOA Blog

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Petition These are the long weeks. The weeksOf waiting. Let them beLonger. Let the days smolderLike the peat slungIn plastic sacks by the greenhouseAnd let the seedlings not rushInto growth but climb the air slowlyAs if it were a ladder,One small foot at a time.Let the fetid smell of bone mealBe the body unlockingAs the river does, slowing to a hazy lazeThat pulls the boaters inAnd makes the fish rise up....

Greetings! Every week throughout the summer, BOA's staff and interns will share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Clues from the Animal Kingdom by Christopher Kennedy—coming in September from BOA Editions. Confusing Myself with the Whippoorwill Today, I was a madness of regrettable actions. At the conveniencestore, I eyed the cashiers warily as they slouched in round-shouldered,teenaged aplomb. Their youth not yet wasted.Try not to think was my mantra as I left through the slow, antagonisticelectric doors, but the whippoorwills disturbed me with their calls,despite a 93% decline in their numbers in the...

Greetings! Every week throughout the summer, BOA's staff and interns will share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week, Intern Noah selected a poem from Diana, Charles, & the Queen  by William Heyen. Keep an eye on the BOA Blog this week for a guest post from Noah with more from this collection.  Boy King Five hundred years ago, this movementin the tomb of Tutankhamen: a gold-leaved chair collapses, dust swirls up in cerement darkness, thenthe long settling of motes. In this way, a poem breaks down into the gold & dust of time,atom by atom. But...

Greetings! Every week throughout the summer, BOA's staff and interns will share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Chaos is the New Calm by Wyn Cooper. Road Trip Morocco to Norfolk to Nashville, halfway around the glove and I'm wandering still. Jane in Virginia told me Tenessee's the new Virginia, that I should pack up and leave. Not until Knoxville did I know she didn't want me around, just hoped I would go. Nashville's a mirage that ripens over the Cumberland River, how I might like it depends. I knock on doors...

Greetings! Every week throughout the summer, BOA's staff and interns will share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem from Laura Read's forthcoming collection Dresses from the Old Country was recently featured in The New York Times Magazine with an introduction by Rita Dove. Pentecost The week after your father died,I see you walking home after schoolin your Wimpy Kid T-shirt,and I don’t even know you, but I wantto call you over like a kidnapperand tell you it’s only beginning.Your head will always be a lit matchlike the apostles in the stained glass windowwhen Jesus came...