BOA Blog

According to War Literature & the Arts reviewer M. K. Sukach, a member of the United States Air Force Academy, The Stick Soldiers (BOA, 2013) "reveal[s] Iraq in all its real and imagined dangers in a language that is somber, angry, deeply reflective, but also intensely, if not darkly humorous." The collection is an "approachable, necessary volume of poems about what it was like to prepare for war, serve in Iraq, and return to Ohio 'a body / much less / without the plated-vest, the ammo.'" Calling Hugh Martin "a keenly observant, thoughtful poet who makes purposeful choices," the review...

"Jim Daniels is one of the nation's finest examples of a poet and fiction writer who has been able to mine his own working class and factory roots to produce literary works that cut deep with their sensitivity and truth," says Michigan State University's Labor Education Program in its weekly announcements. "His latest book of poetry Birth Marks (BOA Editions, 2013), has left the factory behind, in part, but still burns with a fierce light around his growing up in Detroit in a family of factory rats ... In Birth Marks, Daniels is connecting in a darker, more mature, less playful...

Jillian Weise, author of The Book of Goodbyes (BOA, 2013), was presented with her 2013 James Laughlin Award at the Academy of American Poets' Prizes Ceremony on Friday, October 25. Library Journal calls Weise's new collection "edgy" and "in-your face." Reading from her collection at the ceremony, Weise "slyly delivered ache and anger in poems about breaking up and about overhearing two people mocking her at a cafe." Commenting on the event as a whole, Library Journal says,"As amply proved by the 2013 Academy of American Poets' Prizes Ceremony... contemporary poetry is not the sealed-off playground it's sometimes thought to...

HTML Giant is calling Diadem (BOA, 2012) "a collage of images ranging from the surreal to the innocent and childlike." The collection, with poems by Marosa di Giorgio, translated from the Spanish by Adam Giannelli, "paints surrealistic and beautiful pictures of culture, childhood, sexuality, and death." "...these poems could be read as a novel, cover to cover, or on their own as individual pieces, and they would still have the same power and depth. The poems themselves blend and blur the lines between each other, in effect recreating an idea of recalling memories of the past; sometimes fantasy, sometimes all too...

Publishers Weekly has announced its "Best Books of 2013," and Jillian Weise's new release The Book of Goodbyes is on the prestigious list for poetry. Winner of the 2013 James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets, and the 2013 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, The Book of Goodbyes has had a remarkable publication year. Publishers Weekly says of the collection, "These fierce, hip, heartbreaking love poems call out to a lover who can’t be lived with or without. They’re humorous, odd, and full of all the unreasonable truth of love. This book is the real thing." Jillian Weise was...