Ana Božičević

Born in Zagreb, Croatia, Ana Božičević emigrated to New York City in 1997 and studied at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center, CUNY. In 2009 Tarpaulin Sky Press published her debut book of poem, Stars of the Night Commute, which would go on to be named a 2010 Lambda Literary Award finalist for Lesbian Poetry. Three years later, Božičević would win the award with Rise in the Fall, published by Birds LLC. Publishers Weekly calls her third book, Joy of Missing Out (Birds, 2017), “another plaudit-worthy collection that is even more humorous, complex, and responsive to the world,” whose author is “a poet of quiet social revolt .. a contemplative voice that questions contemporary powers: the government, the police, the Internet….” Božičević has received a “40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism” award from Feminist Press, a PEN American Center/NYSCA grant for translating Zvonko Karanović’s It Was Easy to Set the Snow on Fire (Phoneme Media, 2017), and she has worked for the PEN American Center, the Center for the Humanities of the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Bruce High Quality Foundation. Read more at our author page for Ana Božičević and visit Ana’s website at at AnaBozicevic.com

St. Mark’s Poetry Project

Ana Božičević

Born in Zagreb, Croatia, Ana Božičević emigrated to New York City in 1997 and studied at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center, CUNY. In 2009 Tarpaulin Sky Press published her debut book of poem, Stars of the Night Commute, which would go on to be named a 2010 Lambda Literary Award finalist for Lesbian Poetry. Three years later, Božičević would win the award with Rise in the Fall, published by Birds LLC. Publishers Weekly calls her third book, Joy of Missing Out (Birds, 2017), “another plaudit-worthy collection that is even more humorous, complex, and responsive to the world,” whose author is “a poet of quiet social revolt .. a contemplative voice that questions contemporary powers: the government, the police, the Internet….” Božičević has received a “40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism” award from Feminist Press, a PEN American Center/NYSCA grant for translating Zvonko Karanović’s It Was Easy to Set the Snow on Fire (Phoneme Media, 2017), and she has worked for the PEN American Center, the Center for the Humanities of the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Bruce High Quality Foundation. Read more at our author page for Ana Božičević and visit Ana’s website at at AnaBozicevic.com

Stars of the Night Commute
by Ana Božičević

Poetry. 84 pages. Paperback.
A 2010 Lambda Award Finalist for Lesbian Poetry

Cover: Remedios Varo,  Ícono, 1945 (Icon)
Reproduced with kind permission of Anna Alexandra Gruen

Though Bozicevic’s work does terrify, and so, by extension, is rightly ‘about’ terror . . . Stars is more accurately (and happily) about what an émigré does, heart and eyes intact and hungry for the redemptive and the beautiful, after having experienced all that is contrary to the love and kindness (that can be) human beings. (Nicole Mauro, JacketThought-provoking, inspired and unexpected. Highly recommended. (Heather Aimee O’Neil, After EllenAna Bozicevic’s work is sort of animist—it’s either about silence or the racket of the world. How does she do it? Clicks the switch to say it’s silent & it’s happening then on a distant tiny stage. She’s muttering, and then it’s a story and a very good one. I mean in poetry at some point you don’t know what the writer means. In Ana’s work I watch “it” vanish (all the time)  & I trust it. (Eileen Myles) Ana Bozicevic’s work is filled with a wild freedom, and reading it often reminds me of reading Wallace Stevens, in that you know absolutely anything can happen next but whatever it is, it will be perfect. In her poems she expresses an attitude of solemn responsibility to history, both the world’s and her own, yet there is often a marvelous lightness, even playfulness about them…. An émigré from reality (in the form of one of modern time’s most monstrously and moronically cruel wars) and a Cassandra, she is able to perceive with the eyes of language—then render with lyrical immediacy—the experience of our collective sleepwalking soul, who may well soon awaken to discover that its terror was not a dream. (Franz Wright) Stars of the Night Commute haunts in three dimensions, knit by a below-words rumble in the sure rhythm of dreams. Many of the poems carry a shamanistic, elemental quality, as if real matter were articulating out of word-fragments. Bozicevic writes, “At the end of poetry the poem can no longer be remote.” If this is “the end of poetry,” perhaps poetry is, after all, reaching forward back to its beginning. (Annie Finch) Ana Bozicevic’s poetry has everything—a mastery of language, a distinct and singular voice and a worldview so visionary and all-encompassing, so as to both terrify and astound. The words bristle with life, and they command the deepest reverence for the Ineffable, for pure Being. This poetry is clever without being shallow, and this is truly rare. Silence is my most honest response to her work, but a silence rooted in respect and awe for that which is truly great art. (Noelle Kocot)

Though Bozicevic’s work does terrify, and so, by extension, is rightly ‘about’ terror . . . Stars is more accurately (and happily) about what an émigré does, heart and eyes intact and hungry for the redemptive and the beautiful, after having experienced all that is contrary to the love and kindness (that can be) human beings. (Nicole Mauro, JacketThought-provoking, inspired and unexpected. Highly recommended. (Heather Aimee O’Neil, After EllenAna Bozicevic’s work is sort of animist—it’s either about silence or the racket of the world. How does she do it? Clicks the switch to say it’s silent & it’s happening then on a distant tiny stage. She’s muttering, and then it’s a story and a very good one. I mean in poetry at some point you don’t know what the writer means. In Ana’s work I watch “it” vanish (all the time)  & I trust it. (Eileen Myles) Ana Bozicevic’s work is filled with a wild freedom, and reading it often reminds me of reading Wallace Stevens, in that you know absolutely anything can happen next but whatever it is, it will be perfect. In her poems she expresses an attitude of solemn responsibility to history, both the world’s and her own, yet there is often a marvelous lightness, even playfulness about them…. An émigré from reality (in the form of one of modern time’s most monstrously and moronically cruel wars) and a Cassandra, she is able to perceive with the eyes of language—then render with lyrical immediacy—the experience of our collective sleepwalking soul, who may well soon awaken to discover that its terror was not a dream. (Franz Wright) Stars of the Night Commute haunts in three dimensions, knit by a below-words rumble in the sure rhythm of dreams. Many of the poems carry a shamanistic, elemental quality, as if real matter were articulating out of word-fragments. Bozicevic writes, “At the end of poetry the poem can no longer be remote.” If this is “the end of poetry,” perhaps poetry is, after all, reaching forward back to its beginning. (Annie Finch) Ana Bozicevic’s poetry has everything—a mastery of language, a distinct and singular voice and a worldview so visionary and all-encompassing, so as to both terrify and astound. The words bristle with life, and they command the deepest reverence for the Ineffable, for pure Being. This poetry is clever without being shallow, and this is truly rare. Silence is my most honest response to her work, but a silence rooted in respect and awe for that which is truly great art. (Noelle Kocot)

Ana Božičević in the Media

New from Ana Bozicevic & Birds, LLC: Rise in the Fall

So, you've done shot yourself full of the new Boully, but like any good poetry addict, you want more. You're in luck, exquisite corpses. The bangers at Birds got a brand new bundle from Stars of the Night Commute author Ana Bozicevic: Rise in the Fall.

Recommended (online) reading: Action Yes Issue #17

Co-edited by Carina Finn & Ji yoon Lee, with contributions by Johannes Göransson and Emily Hunt, Action Yes Issue #17 features poems by TSky Press chapbook author Emily Toder as well as poems by Zvonko Karanović, translated by TSky Press author Ana Božičević. In addition: excerpts from required-reading-for-the-apocalypse, the authorless Ark Codex ±0, from Derek White's Calamari Press; lyric possession by fave new Black Ocean poet Feng Sun Chen; and other voces magicae from the likes of . . .

Ana Bozicevic interviewed at 3:AM Magazine

Tarpaulin Sky Press author Ana Božičević (Stars of the Night Commute, 2009) is interviewed at 3:AM Magazine: "I remember thinking I wasn’t in love with anyone at the time, so there was no real reason for me to stay. Probably the truth is I knew I wasn’t entirely “of Croatia” even then, and so I was free to go. . . . Nostalgia thinks there’s a place where there is no place, and in its honest, touching delusion it’s no different than any other lover."

Verse reviews Ana Bozicevic’s Stars of the Night Commute

At Verse, Mary Austin Speaker reviews Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009): "Although it is dangerous to make presumptions about the way one’s biography inflects their poetry, I think it’s helpful to consider the conditions of Ana Bozicevic’s native country when she left it. Croatia’s is a history of conflict in which voices speak over each other. Stars of the Night Commute, the author’s first collection of poems, suggests that since her emigration she has been learning how to write her own history while rejecting the very idea of writing history...."

Jacket reviews Ana Bozicevic’s Stars of the Night Commute

At Jacket, Nicole Mauro reviews Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009): "Though Božičević’s work does terrify, and so, by extension, is rightly ‘about’ terror . . . Stars is more accurately (and happily) about what an émigré does, heart and eyes intact and hungry for the redemptive and the beautiful, after having experienced all that is contrary to the love and kindness (that can be) human beings."

Ana Bozicevic’s Stars of the Night Commute reviewed at Transversalinflections

Transversalinflections reviews Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* "Think of the whole book and its sections and its individual poems as a snowglobe that has been shaken up, and where not snow, but objects are floating around in varying connected but wondrous configurations. . . .The poems are no longer primarily linear, but are constellations of ideas that have body and dimensions as well as being open and porous."

After Ellen reviews Bozicevic’s Stars of the Night Commute

At After Ellen, Heather Aimee O'Neil reviews Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009): "Queer poet Ana Božičević’s first book, Stars of the Night Commute, is an intense and highly lyrical collection of poetry.... Božičević’s work is thought-provoking, inspired and unexpected. Highly recommended."

U of Arizona Poetry Center reviews Ana Bozicevic’s Stars of the Night Commute

At the University of Arizona Poetry Center's website, Bonnie Jean Michalski reviews Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009): "Emoticons and screennames, curse words, "yawn, blah, blah, schma...", ozone, yellow cab... this book includes it all. Božičević's is not a poetry enamored of the archaic. Following in O'Hara's footsteps, it challenges us to place the stuff of daily life under the adjective 'poetic.'"

TSky Press authors: Making more than to-do lists

We're delighted to report that Andrew Zornoza's *Where I Stay* is hanging tough at #7 on SPD's Fiction Bestsellers list, and Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* receives not one but five shoutouts at No Tell Motel's "Best Poetry Books of 2009" list.

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