Today you can find any book or magazine you could ever want
at your local mega-bookstore — if you didn’t already buy it online. There’s
little question that small, independent publishing houses didn’t exactly hit
the jackpot with the rise of the Waldens and Barnes & Nobles of the world.
But Thom Ward, fiction editor at Rochester
publishing house BOA Editions, suspects the shipping industry may have.
Independent presses and independent bookstores — which
grew side by side in the arts-happy ’60s and ’70s — enjoyed a symbiotic
relationship until the big box bookstores really hit their stride in the ’90s.
These, as Ward says, weren’t run by “book people.”
“People get enthusiastic and they didn’t understand that you
do not order 500 copies of an unknown Spanish-American poet right off the bat,”
he says. “Returns skyrocketed and the only people that won were UPS and FedEx.”
Twenty years after Barnes & Noble went national and five
years after the Amazon-Borders partnership, BOA is still in the fight for shelf
space in bookstores large, small, and online. The not-for-profit poetry
publishing house was founded 30 years ago by Al Poulin Jr., a poet and SUNY
Brockport professor. (He got BOA by combining Al with Boo, his wife’s name.) He
started the press in the mid-’70s, when a lot of other people across the country were having similar ideas. Independent presses were
springing up alongside arts organizations of every type; liberal arts
departments were being formed at universities nationwide; and organizations
like the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts
had recently been organized to help move all this artistic process forward.
But in the intervening 30 years, most of the small poetry
presses across the country have died out. Streams of arts funding have dried
up. Poetry publishers, much like theaters and symphonies and art museums, are
watching their audiences get older and, maybe, smaller.
But BOA remains, “a band of stalwarts above Arena’s,” as
Ward says.
Peter Conners, BOA’s marketing director and fiction editor, says longevity comes with adaptation.
“What worked 20 years ago doesn’t work necessarily anymore,”
he says. “You want things that are timeless and can still be read 50 years from
now, but they should be authentic from the place that we’re in.”
Conners talks about adding diversity to the booklist. He
also talks about staying in touch with the poetry community, keeping BOA’s
website fresh and interactive, engaging the community, and fundraising.
“These are constant adaptations that have happened over 30
years,” he says. “Without those, the organization doesn’t keep going. That
takes staff, and board, and readers… everybody getting together and saying,
‘What happens in this office is significant because it’s forwarding an
important American artform.'”
BOA receives about 1200 manuscripts a year, and it publishes
only a small fraction of those (170 in its 30 years). But it can certainly brag
about quality. Among its poets are several award winners and finalists — big
awards, like the National Book Award and the Pulitzer — and names even the
uninitiated may recognize: W.D. Snodgrass, Lucille Clifton, Li-Young Lee, Brigit Pegeen Kelly.
But even with big names, there aren’t exactly riches to be
had in this business. BOA earns 20 cents on the sale of each book. And it’s
constantly vying for shelf space and readers. Walk into a Borders or a Barnes
& Noble and look for the poetry section. You’ll find it, eventually. But it
probably won’t be big, and it won’t be next to the chick lit or the thrillers
up front.
“People in Rochester don’t know what BOA is,” says newest addition, Executive Director Nora Jones.
“People don’t go into a bookstore looking for BOA books.”
They’re working on that. When time and resources allow, BOA
hosts poetry readings and other events at schools, museums, bookstores,
libraries, and sometimes board members’ homes. The company is also publishing
two books in the near future with strong Rochester
ties: Breaking the Alabaster:
Conversations with Li-Young Lee edited by Brockport’s Dr. Earl G. Ingersoll
and Body Language: Poems of the Medical
Training Experience compiled by the University
of Rochester’s Stephanie Brown
Clark.
And BOA works with Rochester
businesses whenever possible: a typesetter, a stationary printer, computer
supplier, and book designers are from the area. BOA’s electronic Visual Arts
Library allows poets to choose work created by Rochester-area artists like
Christina Parrett Brinkman, Steve Carpenter, Tarrant Clements, Lynne Feldman,
Richard Harrington, Roberto Lรฉbron, Robert Marx, Rick Muto, Lucinda Storms, and
Patricia Wilder for their book covers.
And in terms of charity, BOA gives of what it has: books.
BOA’s distributor and warehouse is in Minnesota,
and storing books that don’t sell is expensive. Rather than mulch them, BOA
will send them to any prison, school, or Indian reservation that asks.
They’re happy to do it, because, as Conners and Ward say,
poetry should be part of everyday life.
“I’ve done informal studies,” Ward says. “Some were
traumatized: ‘Stand up and give me Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene on pain of death.’ Then they go to a Billy Collins or
Naomi Nye poetry event and they say, ‘This is poetry?'”
In BOA’s 30th anniversary year, there will be several
special events. Check www.BOAeditions.org for info on readings, parties, and,
of course, BOA titles.
This article appears in May 3-9, 2006.
