A Brief History of Swans
We frighten away boyfriends, lovers, strangers, and we do not mind, because we are together: together, we are glorious.
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Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: The Rumpus Interview with Sam Benjamin
Porn was always stronger than me, and it still is.
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The Rumpus Interview with Susan Wright
Susan Wright, activist, writer, and founder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, sits down to discuss the recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders updates, and what they mean for the kink community.
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Deep Throat #4: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
It is not a coincidence that among the synonyms for “practice” is “ritual,” and for “ritual,” “practice.” When you do a thing over and over—even if it is only so banal and small as lighting a cigarette—it will assume a shape and a meaning, a weight and a force.
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Spotlight: Boco Watches the Sea
I asked Boco, “What was the coast guard like?” He said it was lonely.
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FUNNY WOMEN #101: Threat Assessment and Risk Analysis for N. Drew
The client, C. Drew, an attorney, requested an investigation into the extraordinarily high number of violent incidents involving his teenage daughter, N.
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Beyond Americana
These are memories, packaged, dusted, shrink-wrapped, and worn. How strange are they for the man to whom they belonged?
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The Rumpus Interview with Julianna Barwick
With her haunting voice looped in a wordless glossolalia over pianos, keyboards, and other instruments, Julianna Barwick makes music like no other artist working today.
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Ted Wilson Reviews the World #183
GRAIN OF SAND #1
★★★★★ (5 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing a grain of sand.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Susan Steinberg
The author of the stunning collection Spectacle explores connections between visual art and the written word, experimental writing, Virginia Woolf, cowardice, and more.
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The Rumpus Saturday Comic: The Four Truths of Mother
Your physical appearance does not define you.
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Exploring the Redwood Forest: Journals and the Private Self
Lately, over crumb-laden dinner tables and cups of coffee and on windy hillsides I ask friends, family, and peripheral acquaintances whether or not they write in a journal.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jon Mooallem
Jon Mooallem, author of Wild Ones, sits down to discuss human attitudes towards animals, copulation hats, chasing Martha Stewart across the tundra, and the historical relationship between Thomas Jefferson and mammoths.
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: BOB DYLAN’S BLONDE ON BLONDE
The album was the warm yellow window of someone else’s house as you walk by on a cold night. Listening to it was the feeling you get when you look into this stranger’s window and wish you lived there.
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Admit You’ve Paid For It: The Savage Honesty of David Henry Sterry
Writer, performer, educator, and activist David Henry Sterry talks about the deep cultural roots of shame associated with the American sex industry, and how freeing it can be to bleed out the truth about our lives as buyers and sellers of sex.
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Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: The Rumpus Interview with Annie M. Sprinkle
Being a whore was great preparation for being an artist.
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On Loitering
In Charles Moore’s iconic black-and-white photograph, Coretta looks on stoically, lips parted, hands clasped in front as her husband, Martin Luther King, has his right arm bent behind his back by a police officer in a tall hat.
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Women are Bitches
“Women are bitches,” says a young man as he sits down. Apparently a woman at the bar wouldn’t give him her number. He’s talking to the man sitting on his left in spite of the fact that I am sitting two feet to his right and at the same table.
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ALBUM #5, AUDIO PORTRAITS OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS AT WORK: Ariel Schrag
Ariel Schrag first achieved recognition in her teens, when she began writing the autobiographical comic books Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise
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Why I Chose Gregory Orr’s River Inside the River for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
But grace is what I found in River Inside the River. Grace in abundance.
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A Zealot and a Poet
I like to imagine him out there on his beast of burden, vast grey country on all sides and a book of poetry open in his hand. It is a romantic image and, when I think only of it, I can almost forget why he was there.
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The Rumpus Interview with Sandra Bernhard
In an exclusive interview, The Rumpus sits down with the very funny, very feminist Sandra Bernhard to talk about comedy, mothers, life on the road, and, of course, San Francisco, where she’ll be performing this week.
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Ted Wilson Reviews the World #182
MOTHER’S DAY 2013
★★★★★ (0 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Mother’s Day 2013.
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Hold On to What You’ve Got
It feels like we created each other from scratch, scribbling in the details and watching ourselves take shape.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Emily Rapp
A day of celebration for many, Mother’s Day is a more complex holiday for people who have lost their mothers–or their children.
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THE RUMPUS MINI-INTERVIEW PROJECT #48, SARA FINNERTY IN CONVERSATION WITH HER GRANDMOTHER, ELENA IOCCO
My grandparents, Luigi and Elena, were married on February 14th, 1947, in Italy, where there is no such thing as Valentines Day.
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Captain Save-A-Ho
I’d been down that road a million times before and had learned the hard way that unless you had some kind of special line just for them, it never paid to give a client your phone number.
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The Rumpus Interview with Maria Konnikova
Writer Maria Konnikova explores the mechanisms behind how a sharp mind works, through an investigation of one of literature’s premier duos—Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Watson.
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HORN! REVIEWS:
Crapalachia
Kevin Thomas reviews Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place by Scott McClanahan, Rumpus Comics style:
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If you are dreaming a lot about animals, 
