Recent Blog Posts
Poems in honor of Women's History Month
The Academy of American Poets recently put together a selection of poem favorites to kick off the start of Women’s History Month. Lucille Clifton's "sisters," from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, made the list of 11 poems. We love the list so much, we want to share the picks with you. Visit Poets.org to read more about them.“sisters” by Lucille Clifton “You Foolish Men” by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz“The Soul selects her own Society (303)” by Emily Dickinson“[we fight back to control the outside]” by kari edwards“Self-Portrait as Artemis” by Tarfia Faizullah“Moon for Our Daughters” by Annie Finch“Helen” by H. D.“Love Poem” by Audre Lorde“Landscape...
THE BLACK MARIA called an 'intricate epic of black survival'
Ploughshares just published a stunning new review of Aracelis Girmay's the black maria for its series on "books of poetry that imagine humans’ impact on a geologic scale."According to reviewer Rachel Edelman, the black maria is an "intricate epic of black survival" that "enraptures the reader in a gaze that looks simultaneously backward and forward, toward past and future that are impossible to see yet crucial to imagine."The poems in 'elelegy' construct a collectively-focused history of the black body’s movement across the planet, while those in 'the black maria' account daily tragedies and joys of black American survival. Through radical...
Constant Critic calls TROUBLE THE WATER a book that moves 'profoundly'
In a rich and thorough new review from The Constant Critic, reviewer Ray McDaniel calls Derrick Austin’s A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize-winning Trouble the Water "the book of poetry that moved me the most profoundly in 2016."He says, "While much of that power derives from its effortless and unapologetic beauty, it moves me mainly by virtue of being sad. Sadness, too, is one of those things that remains meaningful even when its more elaborated or elevated forms eclipse that core: grief, mourning, despair. . . . Austin’s poems are bounded by conditions of extremity, but unfold, with delicacy and in repose, between those...
PW gives THE TREMBLING ANSWERS starred review
A new *starred* review from Publishers Weekly is calling Craig Morgan Teicher's The Trembling Answers an "affecting examination of the trade-offs that parenthood, adulthood, and art require."With poems that are "perceptive, tender" and "open," Teicher documents his "mortal responsibilities," while also offering a "chance to escape them." Many of his poems also focus on the actual craft of poetry, offering "genuine insight on verse as a vocation."The review concludes, "This is a modest book, but also a rare, undeceived one. It offers only what it can, which may be all that poetry can hope to: small joys and hard-won wisdom."Click here to...
PBS Newshour on poetry about 'growing up black in America'
A new article from PBS Newshour, entitled "Two fathers use poems to teach their kids about growing up black in America," features BOA poet Geffrey Davis (Revising the Storm, 2014) and poet F. Douglas Brown. Reporter Elizabeth Flock comments on how the two, through the poetry they write together, "explore with tenderness and anxiety the joys and perils of being a father—especially a black father—and how to escape the mistakes of past generations."Known for his poetry on fatherhood in particular, Davis's work burrows under the surface of gender, addiction, recovery, clumsy love, bitterness, and faith. The tones explored in his A. Poulin, Jr....