BOA Blog

"Lucille Clifton is the rare poet good enough to survive the Collected Poems treatment." According to Slate reviewer Jonathan Farmer, celebrating poets through Collected Poems can sometimes be an "awkward gesture," but we do it because we love those particular poets and their "human fullness." "Of course," writes Farmer,  "some humans seem more full than others, even in their poems, and Lucille Clifton was about as overflowing as they come." While the 'Collected Clifton' is the biggest book BOA has ever published, in every sense of the word, the Slate review notes the many "unique pleasures in encountering her over...

Photo courtesy of World Literature Today. It seems there are not enough words in any language to adequately praise Naomi Shihab Nye, who just claimed World Literature Today's 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature! While an important contribution to the world, her children's literature isn't all that is getting attention from the award. Ibtisam Barakat, the judge who nominated Nye for the award, said: "Naomi's incandescent humanity and voice can change the world, or someone's world, by taking a position not one word less beautiful than an exquisite poem. Naomi's poetry masterfully blends music, images, colors, languages, and insights...

Ryan Teitman invites readers to challenge assumptions in his collection Litany for the City. According to Anthony Rintala of Southern Indiana Review, "the simple, stubborn act of repetition narcotizes thought. The obsession endlessly mouthed loses all sense and the chant of prayer, strung together like beads, becomes an arrhythmia of consonant stops without connotation, cognition, or coherence—clacks of sound on a dumb ear.” He elaborates: "Poets have long dabbled with the effects of this semantic satiation, the temporary numbness to ear and mind of a familiar word or phrase repeated too often." This reconsideration of and re-construction of language is exactly what...

Ira Sadoff's True Faith revolves around the act of searching. In a collection which the speaker asks questions of his world - "neighbors, friends, the reader, and the gods" - storySouth Review calls Sadoff a searcher of "whatever he can get." Sadoff digs deeply at the meaning of human relationships with the world at large, and then digs deeper still. According to storySouth Reviewer Shawn Delgado, "These poems can be brief reflections or lengthy meditations. Some feel intimate and personal while others unleash a political fury." Throughout this collection are moments of intimate introspection and bold interaction with the world...

The fantastic Poets & Writers featured essay with Craig Morgan Teicher and his wife, poet Brenda Shaughnessy, is now live online! The piece is a remarkable window into the personal and creative lives of the married poets, with insights on how they met, fell in love, and currently thrive in the mix of marriage, parenthood, and poetry: "Finding a poet in New York City is like shooting fish in a barrel, but finding one who’s a kindred spirit, a romantic partner, and a writer you truly admire is more like landing Moby Dick in your third-floor Brooklyn walk-up. We probably...