BOA Blog

Poet Joe Weil shares with readers of the Best American Poetry blog his early personal experiences with poet Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of the recently released Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line. Of Sean, he writes “I knew by his references, by his metaphors, and sound that he had read a great deal of poetry, that he had a far roaming yet accurate ear, and that these poems I was hearing out loud would deepen rather than disappear when I brought the book back with me to the mold making plant and read them at lunch break.”  Read more...

To celebrate this past Valentine’s Day, the editors and writers of Slate were asked to discuss their favorite love poems. Senior Editor Michael Agger selected the poem “Three Rivers” by Alpay Ulku from his book Meteorology; a poem that Michael says captured his attention from the first line.  You can read more of Michael Agger’s comments on the poem here:  http://www.slate.com/id/2284679/pagenum/all/#p2

Cradle Book is "worth your time" according to a review by Kyle Minor from HTML Giant.  Minor writes that Craig Morgan Teicher's newest collection comes from a childhood place that is often not explored in literature today.  His "old-made-new" form brings us back to the style we loved as children, introducing us to characters as colorful as a "crow who was not always a crow."   Quoting lines from various pieces, Minor explains, "The diction is low to the ground, but the tone implies that bigness will be the subject, and the subject will be reached by looking very closely at smallness." Read the full review here HTML Giant       

Recently, the world played witness to the startling events in Egypt, whose political situation had gone largely unnoticed by the general public. We watched as the protests organized and then swelled thanks to the internet, as journalists struggled to cover the event as it turned violent, as President Mubarak struggled to hold on to his position but ultimately conceding power. Now, we continue to watch as the events of Egypt to see what will happen next as the political climate in the Mid-East shifts, spilling over into the surrounding countries. With Mubarak ousted, Egypt enters a new chapter in its...

In addition to the four BOA authors, who were recipients of 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, we are thrilled to announce that translator Brian Henry was awarded an NEA fellowship to support his translation of Slovenian writer Aleš Šteger's collection of lyric essays Berlin.  You can read more about Henry's prestigious grant here.  The NEA fellowship will help Henry to continue his dedication to exposing English readers to the work of one of Slovenia's most promising young writers, an undertaking first begun with Henry's translation of Šteger's The Book Things, which was published just last fall by BOA...