BOA Blog

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems of Sohrab Sepehri, translated by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. Bright Existence Sky, more blue.Water, even bluer!I am on the veranda, Rana by the pond in the garden.She is washing clothes.Leaves are trickling down.“What a sad season,” my mother said this morning.I responded, “Life is an apple best eaten unpeeled.”Our neighbor weaves at her window, humming a soft tune.I am reading the Vedas,sketching pebbles, birds, clouds—Full sun.Starlings flock,nasturtiums burst into blossom.And...

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. To make up for our lost poem from last week, here is a double-feature of two poems from The Human Half by Deborah Brown—now available for pre-order in the BOA Bookstore. Passion Flower This year the white passion flower,no longer extinct, popped up in Hunan province.In an Ecuadorian night, by flashlight,a Pinocchio lizard, a frog, a jellyfish,back from the dead.A supernova begins with the deathof a star, each one born from dust.Liu Xiaobo, in prison, wrote to his wife:“Let the dust bury you.” But he sawa ridge...

The praise keeps rolling in for Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's debut collection! We are proud to announce that Cenzontle has been selected as a finalist for the 2018 Foreword INDIES Award for Poetry, the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and the inaugural Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's Cenzontle was selected by Brenda Shaughnessey as the winner of the 16th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. This NPR Best Book of 2018 won the GLCA New Writers Award and is a finalist for the NCIBA Golden Poppy Award for Poetry, among other literary awards. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was born in Mexico and immigrated to the...

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Night Angler by Geffrey Davis—now available for pre-order in the BOA Bookstore. A Proposal from the Previously Divorced  —For L This ordinary morning in the kitchen, the skybeyond the window content with clouds—while half-listening for the sound of youand our child shining somewhere else in the bellyof this house, I do the dishes to the low humof our freshly plucked love, force my fingersto reach the deep curve of each wine glass,and spend a full five minutes massagingthe unrelenting corners...

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from All Its Charms by Keetje Kuipers—now available for pre-order in the BOA Bookstore. Landscape with Sage and the Names of My Children I picked all the flowers, I palmed all the stones.I dropped the nameless insects onto my tongueand felt their black wings unfurl. I held the deadbuck by his antlers and dragged him through the sage,brought my teeth to the tender bridge of ribs and feduntil the glossy maggots overtook me.I climbed the red rocks robed in their red...