BOA Blog

With our upcoming workshop in poetry inspired by sports and athleticism in mind: Baseball and Writing Marianne Moore Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either how it will go or what you will do; generating excitement-- a fever in the victim-- pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter. Victim in what category? Owlman watching from the press box? To whom does it apply? Who is excited? Might it be I? It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel-- a catcher's, as, with cruel puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly back to plate. (His spring...

It's nearly one week away from BOA Editions' How to Write a Knockout Poem with BOA-poet Sean Thomas Dougherty! Don't miss out on this fun opportunity to work closely with Sean as he guides the master class through a series of exercises to write your own ode to your favorite athletic idol, exploring the specific vocabulary of your chosen sport and how to translate that into your own powerful narrative and imagery. “How to Write a Knockout Poem” will be held on Saturday, January 29 from 10AM to 12PM at Midtown Athletic Club in Rochester Space is limited!  Please reserve...

In an interview with 3AM Magazine,  Ales Steger, called "simply one of the most enjoyable poets to read in Europe right now," answers questions about his poetic style, his influences, and his titles.  Steger has published 4 books of poetry in the past 15 years, his most recent being The Book of Things. When asked about his style, which is called distinct and exact, Steger responds, "There are different kinds of exactness and different goals that could be acheived through attempts at precision.  Although rational, my poetry is not preoccupied with highlighting exact logical procedures.  Rather, it aims at throwing light at...

On Beloit Poetry Journal Poet's Forum, BOA Author Janice Harrington explains the inspiration behind her piece "Why, Oh Why, the Doily?"  She walks us from her early drafts in 2004 to the "springboard" Selden Rodman provided in Horace Pippen:  A Negro Painter in America. "I knew I wanted a poem that enacted obsession, wanted to crochet a poem (links, chains, intertwining, dropped stitches) that moved from the specifics of family history and memory toward more abstract representations." She then goes on to give an analysis of each section of her work, starting with section one, which "begins with a memory:  a woman crocheting beside the front window of her living room. ...

In the latest publication of The Hollins Critic, Lynnell Edwards offers her response to Cecilia Woloch's most recent book Carpathia.  Edwards writes that Woloch beautifully explores the notion of "place," a theme that is increasingly being studied by journals, panels, and universities.   "Cecilia Woloch's most recent book of poetry, Carpathia (2009) as well as her first four books spring chiefly from this complex understanding of place as both emotional and historical geography, and it is a theme that informs the trajectory of her five volumes of poetry."    Read an excert from the review here The Hollins Critic