BOA Blog

In anticipation of his upcoming performance(s) at the Utah Arts Festival this weekend, Sean Thomas Dougherty has been featured extensively in multiple pieces by the Utah Review. "When reading Sean Thomas Dougherty’s work," says UR writer Les Roka, "one often realizes how easily a ‘Dougherty moment’ can pop up — that fleeting moment of a familiar connection, an unexpected yet relevant epiphany about a relationship, event, struggle, love, or pain. A prodigious poet with a vast complex of influences cultivated through an exceptionally voracious appetite for reading, experiences, music and ever-alert observation, he offers up a language rendered, as he...

On Friday, June 19, BOA Poet Sean Thomas Dougherty was awarded a Lifetime of Achievement recognition by Erie, PA, literary institution Poet's Hall. Poet's Hall founder Cee Williams writes: "With more than a dozen collections to his credit, the award-winning poetry of Sean Thomas Dougherty has drawn national attention to our scene. And so, we celebrate him with the highest honor we can bestow: our 2015 Lifetime of Poetry Achievement Award." Also honored at the ceremony was Erie poet Berwyn Moore for her work for the community, and three high school poets who won a contest that Dougherty judged. Poet's...

The Academy of American Poets recently reviewed G.C. Waldrep's new collection Testament, offering high praise and a proverbial thumbs up to the poet's language and style. "Capitalism, notions of gender, and language itself are critiqued and examined throughout . . . Erudite and glittering, Waldrep’s language consists of Ashberian non sequiturs that are sonically lush and often nature-related." In this book-length poem, Waldrep addresses matters as diverse as Mormonism, cymatics, race, Dolly the cloned sheep, and his own life and faith. Drafted over twelve trance-like days while in residence at Hawthornden Castle, Waldrep responds to such poets as Alice Notley, Lisa Robertson, and...

Publishers Weekly recently reviewed BOA's new translation Smugglers, with poems by Aleš Debeljak, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry. "Debeljak’s insistence on formal consistency, humor, and adherence to his subject, along with translator Henry’s efforts at retaining his syntactical and cultural idiosyncrasies, put the personal, and traditional, experience of those historical events at the forefront of this collection. A troubled national history and the continuing traumas of a young nation may well strike readers as the heart of the collection." The review continues, "Set in various locations around his home city, Ljubljana, this series of tonally folksy, yet formally rigid,...

Reviewer Madeleine Kruhley offers high praise for The Secret of Hoa Sen, written by Nguyen Phan Que Mai and translated by the author and Bruce Weigl, in a recent review by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Kruhley endorses Mai's ability to maintain a sense of confidence among the shadow of situation: "While there are dark, gritty elements at play, Que Mai’s work does not lose itself to despair. She crafts subtleties in sentiment without being overly sentimental." This collection of poems is riddled with honest moments, illustrating the intimacy associated with cultural elements of Vietnam, whose "secrets are intrinsic to...