BOA Blog

In a recent Metro Times interview, Peter Markus discusses with poet Jim Daniels his newest and 14th collection Birth Marks. According to Markus, Daniels' poems "invite us in to the daily conversation, giving us permission to speak about what it means to be a part of this world." Here are some excerpts from the interview we found particularly engaging. Enjoy! Metro Times: This new book opens with these lines: “I am not a minister’s son or a former pro boxer, but I have a few things to say.” What is it in the world, what is it about the world,...

Li-Young Lee will be the honored poet of the 2014 Jean Burden Poetry Reading, which is California State University, Los Angeles' most esteemed annual literary event. Lee will read from his own works, including BOA titles Rose, Breaking the Alabaster Jar, The City In Which I Love You, Book of My Nights, and The Winged Seed. The event will be held on March 6, 2014, in the Golden Eagle Ballroom at California State University, Los Angeles. Doors will open at 5:45pm for a buffet reception and the program will begin at 6:30pm. This event is free and open to the public.There...

Fleda Brown's new collection No Need of Sympathy is honored as a "February Exemplar" by the Washington Independent Review of Books. In her monthly column “Exemplars: Poetry Reviews,” reviewer Grace Cavalieri calls Brown's work a "'classic technique,' hiding shadows and pockets of tiny universes within each poem." According to Cavalieri, a longtime a fan of Brown's poetry, "If you take a lid off, you'll get history, popular culture, society, childhood--and all as if she's just learning something new about herself by the writing. This is her poetic capital--a cultivated writer with the gift of intricacy/enrichment imbedded in a poem so...

According to American Microreviews and Interviews, Keetje Kuipers' first collection Beautiful in the Mouth "is a body of work bursting with 'much goodness' and many truths, some hard to read, yet impossible to forget." "Uncommon imagery prevails in this collection," says reviewer Dana D. Livermore. "However, what struck me most is the amount of angst and passion Kuipers can pack into a single phrase or line, which often lands like a sucker punch to the stomach; you feel it in your gut." Noted in the review is the distinct sense of embodiment in Kuipers' poetry. "...my body reacts to Kuipers’ poetry...

(W.D. Snodgrass, photo courtesy of The New York Times) The New York Times remembered the late W.D. Snodgrass recently with a special piece entitled "Knocking Once Again on the Poet's Door." Snodgrass, the author of numerous BOA collections including Each in His Season (1993), The Fuehrer Bunker (1995),  After-Images (1999), and Not For Specialists (2006), among others, passed away in 2008. In the piece, journalist William McDonald recalls both his first and last interviews with the late poet. "William DeWitt Snodgrass spent a half-century or more writing poetry, most of it vigorous and plain-spoken. In the 1960s, the poet and critic...