BOA Blog

Jeanne Beaumont's Burning of the Three Fires recently earned respectable praise, courtesy of Coal Hill Review. Her poems are called curious for a few reasons: "First, Beaumont is alert to various and sometimes obscure aspects of the world: arcane information from Wikipedia, art, etymologies, fairy tales told slant, slasher movies, magician's tricks.  Then, the poems are curious in the older sense: subtly, carefully, and skillfully worked." The reviewer seems particularly fond of Beaumont's subtlety, of her ability to manipulate the tone "with such a light touch," which left the reviewer feeling "the kind of twist someone can give when she...

The Book of Things by Aleš Šteger, translated by Brian Henry, and published by BOA in 2010, has been awarded the Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. Organized by Three Percent at the University of Rochester, the Best Translated Book Award is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the U.S. over the previous year. The ceremony was held on Friday, April 29 at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. This year, for the first time, the event was held in collaboration with the PEN World...

University of Rochester's Three Percent took a look at Aleš Šteger’s The Book of Things and bestowed equal praise on the author and translator Brian Henry alike.  Henry is commended for matching the sophistication of Šteger’s writing in his translation, particularly in his replications of "tone and sound play of the Slovenian originals." The sophistication of translation is also remarkable given the "complex layering" that "is characteristic of Šteger’s poems."  The review also praises Šteger for his "dry, observant humor" and his imagery, both "dark" and "descriptive." "It's one of the best collections of poetry in translation in recent memory,"...

A review of Sean Thomas Dougherty's Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line is in the current issue of H_NG M_N, an online journal of poetry, prose, etc.  The reviewer highlights the book's "back-story," a story in which "Dougherty, a self-described underground sound, makes music of his comings and goings, of his staying home for a while and then traveling out into the world again." The review goes on to note the importance of sound in these lyric poems, which "[hang] these sounds out like shirts and pants and socks between the highest stories, lines of words patterned between our...

[caption id="attachment_1017" align="aligncenter" width="196" caption="This New & Poisonous Air. Stories by Adam McOmber."][/caption] Adam McOmber's forthcoming book, This New & Poisonous Air, was recently reviewed by Donna Seaman for Booklist.  The review in its entirety is printed here: "In his first book, a collection of short stories that ventures into fable, myth, and fairy tale, McOmber's language is so finely burnished it nearly achieves invisibility.  Most of these mysterious tales are set in the past, and all involve strange, even macabre embodiments of forbidden passions. in the title story, a girl abandoned by her father after the bubonic plague claims...