Gregg Barrios Reviews Aracelis Girmay’s Kingdom Animalia on Oprah.com

Hansen Publishing Group author Gregg Barrios, a playwright and poet, wears many hats. One is as a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. Gregg often emails me links to his book reviews. Recently he sent me one for Aracelis Girmay’s collection of poems entitled Kingdom Animalia. The review was picked up on Oprah.com. Naturally, I was happy for him and the author because everyone in the book publishing  industry covets any association with Oprah.

Reading the review, I made two pleasant discoveries. One, I discovered the poet, Aracelis Girmay (I just downloaded Kingdom Animalia to my Kindle). Two, the publisher of Kingdom Animalia is BOA Editions which was started by a former professor of mine, Albert Poulin, Jr. In fact, I often joked that I majored in Al Poulin since as an undergraduate I had taken 4-5 courses with him. I first met Al Poulin in the fall of 1973 at the Alternative College at SUNY Brockport. I remember him sitting on a desk in the front of a classroom, drinking coffee from a white Styrofoam cup, and chain smoking while teaching Robert Bly’s poem, “The Teeth Mother, Naked at Last.” I was lucky to have had Al as a teacher before and after his open heart surgery, which was a Bob Fosse experience as he told it. The fall of 1973 was the before. Afterwards, he would often recount how the poet Anne Sexton called and asked him, “Al, what was it like to almost die on the table?” We students loved Anne Sexton, so the conversation was not lost on us.

I last saw Al Poulin, Jr. in 1978 at Ohio University where I was then a graduate student in the creative writing program and BOA Editions was in its infancy. He and the poet John Logan, who also published with BOA, had come to do a workshop and poetry readings. Al Poulin, Jr. was an industrious guy—especially for the literary world, so it’s nice to see that BOA Editions is continuing his work in 2012.

Thanks, Gregg Barrios for conjuring up this memory via your book review.