BOA Blog

In an interview with Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, Craig Morgan Teicher discusses his two most recent publications, Ambivalence and Other Conundrums (Omnidawn, Fall 2014) and To Keep Love Blurry (BOA, Fall 2012). Teicher is known for his intimately confessional poetry, which, according to Publishers Weekly, "risks most everything poetry can risk." Check out these excerpts we found particularly interesting: CWB: I have found your poetry to be constantly engaging in a variety of forms and yet, at the same time, taking up the feasibility of language as an effective device for communication as a continual theme. I might argue that...

By Jenna Fisher, Director of Marketing and Production Ah, February—the month of love, heart-shaped sugar, and even anti-mush cynicism. There's no doubt—whether with bright words of love, or furious words of heartbreak—poetry and Valentine's Day go naturally hand-in-hand. Celebrate the way you want to with our Valentine's Day Book Guide. Keep these titles near, whether you're rejoicing—or enduring—February 14. And for all you Valentine's Day lovers and Anti-Valentine's Day cynics, we give you the gift of FREE SHIPPING on any BOA Bookstore order through February 24! Because BOA loves you. 1. For the jaded heart that's lost its way. The...

Late in 2013, Janice Harrington was honored by CBS Chicago as one of five "Best Local Poets." Dubbed a "compelling poet" and an "accomplished writer" by CBS Chicago, Harrington's BOA collections Even the Hollow my Body Made is Gone and The Hands of Strangers are called "vividly haunting portrayals of distant memories lost, but not forgotten." The Hands of Strangers made another recent media appearance, this time in a piece by Tim Mullaney of McKnight's Long-Term Care News--not your typical literary review. Though admittedly not a poetry aficionado, Mullaney was intrigued by the collection after Harrington's CBS Chicago feature, and...

Fifty-eight short "histories" in Aurelie Sheehan's Jewelry Box make up the memoir-like collection that holds within it pieces of gold. In a recent Trop review, reviewer Erica Blumenson-Cook looks deep into Sheehan's "histories" and how they relate to memory. "What I discovered was something like finding a box of trinkets and photographs at a stranger's yard sale or attic. There is no way to know if these bits of jewelry, knick-knacks, photographs, letters, and postcards all belonged to one person, or if they all just somehow ended up in the same box. You wonder how they got there and what...

In a recent Newpages review of Jim Daniels' new collection Birth Marks, reviewer Kelly M. Sylvester focuses attention on the people inhabiting the poems: "students trying to get away with plagiarism or trying to commit suicide, an addict nephew, and a drunk-thief-TV repairman." According to the Sylvester, "Daniels applies overt wit throughout his poems about the various characters and the backdrops they inhabit, especially when the narrator is commenting on his own experiences." Daniels' collection focuses on the urban landscape and its effects on its inhabitants as they struggle to establish community. The way he does this, however, is entirely...