BOA Blog

With the 13th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize just around the corner, BOA is thrilled to announce that esteemed poet David St. John will judge this year's contest. David St. John has been honored, over the course of his career, with many of the most significant awards for poets, including fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, both The Rome Fellowship and an Award in Literature from The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the O. B. Hardison Prize (a career award for teaching and poetic achievement) from The...

HTML Giant recently posted "25 points" about BOA's new Pakistani translation Light and Heavy Things, a collection of selected poems by Zeeshan Sahil, translated from the Urdu by Christpoher Kennedy, Faisal Siddiqui, and Mi Ditmar. The 25 points, listed almost as one's informal stream of consciousness through reading the book, provide background on Sahil's life, the time period in which he was writing, and the trends that his writing fits into. The points comment on particular poems, and on the poet himself. Here are some of our favorites: 2. Zeeshan Sahil was born in Hyderabad, Sindh, in the ‘60s. He...

In honor of Mother's Day this weekend, we've selected some great books to explore for the occasion. Some of these collections are by mothers, some of mothers, and all portray the importance, influences, and challenges of the role. You and Yours, poems by Naomi Shihab Nye (2005) Sewing, Knitting, Crocheting (Mother's Day 1999) A small striped sleeve in her lap, navy and white, needles carefully whipping in yarn from two sides. She reminds me of the wide-angled women filled with calm I pretended I was related to in crowds. In the next seat a yellow burst of wool grows into...

Image courtesy of The New York Times Book Review | 5 May 2013 Beloved poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Li-Young Lee have been garnering big attention in recent media. In last Sunday's The New York Times Book Review, American poet and critic Robert Bly lists both Naomi Shihab Nye and Li-Young Lee as two of his "favorite poets of all time." Naomi Shihab Nye is the author of BOA titles Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You and Yours (2005), and Transfer (2011); Li-Young Lee is the author of BOA titles Rose (1986), The City in Which I Love You (1990), Book...

BOA poet Ryan Teitman, author of the recent Litany for the City (2012), has his poem "Archipelago" featured as a Read Selection for the new issue of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. We thought we'd share it with you. Congratulations, Ryan! Archipelago Ryan Teitman A bird is a kind of island. In flight, a flock is called an archipelago. At rest, a peninsula. When two flocks meet, they are called a communion. Used in a sentence: Two flocks met and became a communion. A surgeon opens a body with a scalpel. A scalpel is a kind...