BOA Blog

Peter Conners', Publisher of BOA Editions, 'Waiting to Hear from Lucille' on the City Lights Booksellers and Publishers Blog is expressive and details an incredible journey of signs and poetry. At a reception that followed the Furious Flower reading, Peter Conners spoke with Lucille's daughters, Lexi and Sidney, about publishing The Collected Works of Lucille Clifton. This conversation led to beginning the manuscript, and along the way Peter experienced his own series of signs and spirituality. Peter emphasizes how in the "body of Lucille's poetry, you'll see a poet moving fluidly between the natural and the spirit(ual) world, never clearly...

The AWP Annual  Conference & Bookfair is but a week away! Catch BOA authors, staff, and books throughout the weekend at the following times: Thursday, March 1: 9:00 A.M.-10:15 A.M. R102. On Being a Jewish Poet: Writing and Identity (Patty Seyburn, Jacqueline Osherow, Emily Warn, Yehoshua November) Astoria, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor In the 21st century, what does it mean to be a Jewish poet? What is a Jewish poem? Some Jewish poets resist a fixed Jewish identity. Jewishness for C. Bernstein is “a practice of dialogue... an openness to the unfolding performance of the everyday.” Others write poetry rooted...

Stephany Prodromides’ review of BOA’s publication, Nomina written by Karen Volkman for "Poetry International #17," highlights Volkman’s abstract wordplay in her poems. “There is no question that these are athletic poems; they open their fullest flower to those with a strong vocabulary.” Prodromide also states that within Volkman’s poems there is a certainty of truth, even mathematical truth, which are both essentially beyond understanding. Prodromide believes Nomina is fine work where meaning is both exponential and multidirectional within the book. “The heavy consonance, end rhymes, internal rhymes, and the repeated ‘none’ and mathematical concepts create a musical meaning over and...

In Nick Courtright’s review of the BOA publication, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts written by G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher, in “Gently Read Literature” Courtright stresses that the writers are a perfect match for each other. He believes the writer can seek proof of Waldrep’s effortless execution or Gallaher’s effusive delightful tendencies, yet there is no need to attach a name to a single poem. Courtright states that the poets continually surprise the reader and the subversion of the narrative is insistently dream-like in its quality and unlike “narrative poems” are evasive and dodgy. “The collection acts as...

This year, to better celebrate Valentine's day, our very own Peter Conners read poems from BOA authors Li-Young Lee and Wendy Mnookin at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra Valentine's Day performances this past week! Each performance included music from Richard Strauss' romantic Der Rosenkavalier, alongside the delicate Rose Absolute by Japanese-born Karen Tanaka and Stefan Jackiw returned to play Bruch's ebullient Scottish Fantasy. The selected poems this year were From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee and How Men, How Women by Wendy Mnookin and we're happy to share them with you today to read and enjoy! From Blossoms By Li-Young Lee From the...