BOA Blog

In an insightful Rain Taxi review, Adam McOmber's This New and Poisonous Air (BOA, 2011) is dubbed "a lyric and powerful testament to Gothic invention."  Reviewer Charles Dodd White likens McOmber's stories to those of Poe and Hawthorne, as they "explore inner and outer darkness, charting shadowlines of romance and obsession." McOmber's unique prose captures key elements of setting and historical time periods, allowing his stories to "occupy a space that comments on historic and cultural inequities without ever becoming tendentious." The review calls his writing "best" when the author uses historical settings and elements which aptly match his "baroque...

Dine & Rhyme is just a little more than a week away! If you haven't yet claimed your tickets to the hottest poetry event in Rochester this fall - not to worry - there's plenty of time left! On Sunday, September 23, you won't want to miss Dorianne Laux and Nin Andrews read from their own work and from the just-released The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. The readings will take place at 3pm in the Auditorium of the Memorial Art Gallery, and the reception, dinner, and silent auction will begin at 5pm at Good Luck Restaurant. Tickets for...

Christopher Kennedy's Ennui Prophet finds much praise in the Fall 2012 issue of The Kenyon Review's KROnline. Reviewer Lauren Goodwin Slaughter calls the collection's prose poems "knee buckling," and finds them woven together by both introspection and humor in the effort to show that American individualism is in serious trouble. "America has been bedazzled to death." According to the review, Kennedy "exploits the threat hiding in seemingly benign settings and objects," revealing that humans have become "obliged to construct the self through meaningless, manufactured materials." Simple, everyday locations become vessels for further examination. In this fourth collection by Kennedy, "grocery stores,...

In a recent review from Library Journal, Bruce Beasley's Theophobia is called "an investigation into the physical world and what lies beyond." Reviewer Chris Pusateri immediately picks up on the essence of Beasley's new work by identifying what the poet already knows and participates in so boldly: the truth of humanity's ongoing search for sense and meaning of the world and humanity's role within it. According to the review, humans have practiced "philosophy, science, politics, religion, and poetry in the hopes of explaining the baffling aspects of existence." This new book by Beasley addresses the same questions we have asked...

Jeanne Beaumont's fans will be delighted to know that she is the Featured Reader for the Guilford Poets Guild's Second Thursday Poetry Series event, TONIGHT at 7 p.m. Beaumont is the author of Burning of the Three Fires and Curious Conduct, among others, and her poems have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines including Columbia Poetry Review, Good Poems for Hard Times, The Manhattan Review, The Nation, New Letters, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2007, When She Named Fire: Contemporary Poetry by American Women, World Literature Today. She won the 2009 Dana Award...