Our April poet, Carmen Giménez Smith, was featured on NPR’s NewsPoet series. (NewsPoet has featured Rumpus Poetry Book Club poet and recent Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith as well.) Check it out.

And if you’d like to become a member of the Poetry Book Club–we’re talking about Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s collection The Ground right now–click here.

To almost no one’s surprise, last night North Carolina became the 31st state to ban same-sex marriage. This is the second time North Carolina has done this–the first time was just a state law; this one was a Constitutional amendment. This Constitutional amendment, though, does more than simply ban same-sex marriage. It cancels out all domestic partnerships that aren’t marriage, it could easily remove protections for people in abusive relationships and affect things like hospital visitation and child custody for even heterosexual couples in North Carolina. And it’s expected to harm the ability of North Carolina businesses to convince talented people to move into the state.

Some people angry at the outcome of last night’s election have started a petition to ask the Democratic National Committee to move their nominating convention out of Charlotte as a result. I don’t expect it will happen, given the incredible amount of money it would cost to do so, and the logistical challenge it would pose, but I do expect that the effort by some state Democratic party chairs to have marriage equality as part of the platform will get some more support than it might have otherwise.

Something I think is important to remember about the current state of marriage equality is that even the fact that this vote took place–horrid as this may sound–is a sign of progress. Forty years ago, the idea that a majority of people would support same-sex marriage (the way they do today) would have been a pipe-dream. These votes are happening because opponents of LGBT rights and marriage equality know that they’re going to lose in the long run, so they’re throwing up as many barriers as they can to stop progress. They didn’t happen before because no one imagined it could ever happen. But anti-marriage-equality people are scared now, and they know they’re on the wrong side of history.

Who would have imagined even ten years ago that a sitting president up for re-election would come out in favor of same-sex marriage, as President Obama has just done? Maybe a lame duck president, or one who’s out of office (as former President Bill Clinton did a while back), but a sitting president in the middle of a campaign? That’s a sign of how far we’ve come.

We still have a long way to go, though, and pointing fingers or mocking or saying stupid things like “we should have let the South go when they wanted to go” isn’t the way to do it. After all, there are 31 states (including mostly progressive California) which have done just what North Carolina did. If marriage equality means a lot to you, then work hard to make sure that you elect people who support it. Change peoples’ minds and get them to support those candidates as well. Vote, but don’t just do that. Voting is the bare minimum you have to do to be a citizen. Do more than the minimum.

Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, reports that poet Joshua Clover and 11 students at UC Davis are potentially facing a $1 million fine and up to 11 years each in prison. Their crime? Peaceful protest.

A petition is circulating which demands that UC Davis drop all charges, and if I hear about any other plans to pressure the UC Davis administration, I’ll update this post to reflect them.

I grew up in the Deep South in the 70′s and 80′s, where unions were limited in number and power by Orwellian-named “right-to-work” laws, so I thought May Day involved kids with streamers dancing around a pole. Not that I ever actually saw that either, but there were pictures in books. (I wouldn’t have participated anyway, since being a Jehovah’s Witness generally meant that any holiday was off limits.)

This is not about the May pole or a spring festival. No, this update is about the “arise, ye workers from your slumber” May Day, the international labor day. And this year, there are a number of protests taking place around the world.

Voice of America has a slideshow of rallies. Al Jazeera has more coverage.

Occupy Wall Street has rallies planned throughout New York City today and they’re streaming some of them live.

There’s concern among some in the Occupy movement that new groups will try to turn the movement into a wing of the Democratic party.

And no surprise, The Guardian is doing terrific work covering the protests.

This month, the Rumpus Book Club has been reading the latest novel from Emily St. John Mandel, The Lola Quartet. Here’s some of what other people have been saying about the book.

Library Journal says of it “Evocative, intriguing, and complex, this novel is as smooth as the underbelly of a deadly, furtive reptile. Mandel’s substantial fan base will rejoice; word of mouth will bring new fans on board.”

IndieBound, which put last month’s book, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild on its Indie Next List, will put The Lola Quartet atop its May list.

Publisher’s Weekly interviewed Mandel here and reviewed it here, saying it “excels as a character study that considers the slow degradation of hopes, dreams, and expectations of people who are only in their late 20s but already feel ancient.”

And from last May, Emily St. John Mandel writes about bad reviews over at The Millions.

May’s book is about to go out too–it’s Cures for Hunger, a memoir by Deni Y. Béchard. If you’d like to join the Rumpus Book Club, click here.

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

The Story Gets Away From Him

Billy Collins
is dining with friends. …more

W. S. DiPiero has been awarded the 2012 Ruth Lilly Prize by the Poetry Foundation. From the Poetry Foundation website: “Presented annually to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets. At $100,000, it is also one of the nation’s largest literary prizes. Established in 1986, the prize is sponsored and administered by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. The prize will be presented at the Pegasus Awards ceremony, along with the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award, at the Poetry Foundation on Monday, June 11.”

I met DiPiero when I was his student at Stanford from 2003-5, and I consider him a friend. I was incredibly pleased when he allowed us to publish some of his work to kick off our 2010 National Poetry Month project. I think I might have to drive up to Chicago to see the ceremony.

That’s one hell of a birthday present, there. A Pulitzer Prize!

We’d like to point out that The Rumpus Poetry Book Club had an idea of just how awesome this book was even before it officially came out. Not that we’re bragging or anything. (You can join the Rumpus Poetry Book Club by clicking here.)

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Semi-Aubade

When I wake in the morning,
my mind is black. …more

The news broke earlier today that George Zimmerman will be charged for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The charge is second-degree murder. Something important to remember about this case: Trayvon Martin was killed 46 days ago. This only became a bit of a story less than a month ago. If not for the public outcry over the shoddy investigation of this crime, Zimmerman would never have faced a jury.

Another important thing to remember about this case: a charge is a long way from a conviction, and there’s a good chance Zimmerman could be acquitted, based on what little public evidence is available.

Part of the problem with this case has to do with the Stand Your Ground law on the books in Florida.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (who has done wonderful work on this story for weeks now) focuses on the shoddy job police initially did on the investigation.

Charles Pierce reports that US Attorney General Eric Holder has the US Justice Department looking into potential civil rights violations. Pierce also predicts the “precis of poo that will be flung in response.”

Adrienne Rich, one of the preeminent poets of the 20th and early 21st centuries, has died at the age of 82, according to the LA Times. I don’t really have much to add–she was an amazing poet and powerful presence on the poetic scene, and her influence can be seen in the work of tons of people writing today.

We reviewed her most recent collection, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, last year, and reviewer Weston Cutter had very little exposure to her work before taking the book on. It was a journey of discovery for him, and he concluded his review this way:

“By the book’s end (and though there are six sections in the book, the collection’s fifth is a series of massive jabs and cuts: it’s as devastating a series of poems as I’ve read anywhere in awhile), the reader will be heightened, pushed into more aliveness: tonight—whenever, wherever we are—no poetry will serve, no verse can wrap neatly around the mess and scramble of things, but someone—Adrienne Rich, any of us—still has to try to make it.”

I think that’s a good way to describe her work as a whole. She will be missed.

If you came by the Rumpus table at the AWP convention in Chicago last week you might have seen me or my partner/book designer Amy Letter demonstrating this anthology. …more

Aging eyes can adversely affect your health.

Easily pronounced names may make people more likable. I wonder if there’s a backlash against names which get too popular?

Do you want to know what microbes are living on your smartphone?

Rainfall dissipates as much atmospheric energy as turbulence.

Will global warming make us shrink?

Nice interview with Andreas Tziolas of Project Icarus.

The AWP Convention starts this coming Wednesday, and The Rumpus will be there. Thursday night we’ll be raising money for 826 Chicago, which is an awesome youth literacy program and which is home to The Boring Store, which is definitely not a secret agent supply store. Not at all. But if someone wants to hook me up with a Quick Disguise Stick or a Tea Sub, you know, you might be able to find something there. …more

Two days ago I watched rain turn into snow and back into rain again over a three minut stretch. I’ve never seen that before.

Hooray for Kickstarter–I really mean that–but it’s more than a little messed up that they’re going to distribute more money this year than the NEA, not because Kickstarter is distributing so much, but because the NEA is distributing so little, especially when compared to what the federal government spends on much less beneficial programs. $146 million is nothing on the federal level.

Lots of big stories this week about personhood amendment and unnecessary invasive medical procedures and attacks on a woman’s right to choose her own medical care. This story got lost a little in the shuffle. It’s about how some women–including a 15-year old–are facing significant jail time for a miscarriage.

There are consequences to pushing conscience-based sex education, and they’re not pleasant ones.

These people really are blue bloods.

A manifesto for web kids.

The Crab Nebula may be acting as a fast particle accelerator.

If you’re going to take a picture of a black hole, you apparently need a telescope the size of Earth. So some scientists are building one, sort of.

Tasmanian Devils are in danger of becoming extinct because of a contagious cancer. Scientists are studying their genome in hopes of not only stopping the disease, but to learn more about contagious cancers in general.

Tiny chameleons!

A brief history of the Wow! signal and the push to continue investigating it.

It might not be the worst poem in the universe, as was recently claimed on Wikipedia, but Gina Rinehart’s paean to mining is pretty bad. I’ll copy a couple of couplets here for you, and you can decide whether to go read the rest.

Some envious unthinking people have been conned
To think prosperity is created by waving a magic wand
Through such unfortunate ignorance, too much abuse is hurled
Against miners, workers and related industries who strive to build the world

Hard to believe, but in a week and a half, The Rumpus will be in Chicago for the AWP convention, and we’ll reading to raise money for 826 Chicago on the evening of March 1. I’ve been with the Rumpus for 3 years and this will be my first Rumpus event, unless you count standing next to Isaac at the table while he entices convention goers with his requests to “check out our sweet mugs.” Readers will include Nick Flynn, Sommer Browning, Peter Orner, Stephen Elliott, me, and the newly un-anonymous Sugar, Cheryl Strayed. See you there!

Never fight a culture war on the Internet.

Nevada is the first state to regulate self-driving cars. Very excited about this.

And if I could get a self-driving Badonkadonk Land Cruiser, so much the better.

More than half the babies born to women under thirty occur outside marriage.

Rumpus Poetry Editor Brian Spears on why he selected D. A. Powell’s Useless Landscape or A Guide for Boys for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club in February. …more

I for one welcome our origami robot overlords.

So this story has a bat fly trapped in amber that’s 20 million years old. Who makes this into a movie?

Is cadmium the new lead?

NASA has awesome space pictures, which you would expect. These are from 10 billion years ago.

Purple Squirrel.

Say hello to Amasia, the super continent that will form in 200 million years when North and South American merge with Asia.

Last night the low was 1. Not Celsius either. In Celsius it was like negative fuck-you. Earlier in the day I looked out the door and saw bright sunny skies. Then I walked outside and discovered just how cold it can possibly be even when the sun is out. Oh how naive I have been*.

Dahlia Lithwick shows just how empty the case against same-sex marriage really is, and uses the decisions on Prop 8 this past week to do it.

Good news! The world is happier today than it was in 2007.

Sam Anderson’s piece on Charles Dickens World in the NY Times is brilliant if only for its description of the Great Expectations Boat Ride. But the whole thing is worth reading.

Tesla (remember them?) unveiled a new model of car, and says it will begin deliveries in 5 months. That I will likely never be able to afford one does nothing to lessen my excitement over this car.

The Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prizes in poetry were awarded recently. Congratulations to all the winners. I interviewed Mary Rosenberg, who administers the prize, back in 2009 for The Rumpus, back when I was a brand-new poetry editor.

* I fully expect people to comment on this and tell me how much of a wimp I am. Bring it.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage after the California Supreme Court had previously found that same-sex couples had the right to marry. You can find a link to the actual ruling at SCOTUSblog.

That doesn’t mean, however, that same-sex couples in California can start getting married again immediately. SCOTUSblog adds “The Circuit Court said its ruling would remain on hold until it issued the formal mandate to put the ruling into effect. In the meantime, the proponents of Proposition 8 have the option of asking the full Ninth Circuit Court to reconsider en banc Tuesday’s ruling.”

There’s also an expectation that an appeal to the Supreme Court is forthcoming.

Slate Jurisprudence Columnist Dahlia Lithwick is blowing up Twitter right now with the decision. No hashtag, so that link has a limited lifespan. She points out that Judge Reinhardt, who authored the opinion, keeps coming back to the principle that Prop. 8 eliminated a right the state had already granted, that the “only purpose and effect of Prop 8 was to lessen status and dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

The 9th Circuit also “refused to invalidate [Judge Vaughn] Walker’s ruling on the grounds that he should have disclosed he was in a long term same-sex relationship.”

It’s taken 20 years, but Russian scientists are about to breach Lake Vostok, which has been covered by the Antarctic ice cap for 14 million years.

Hey you folks–if you need volunteers to test these virtual reality contact lenses, right here. Call me.

New life forms have been found in “blue holes”. Scientists think it might help them identify life on moons like Enceladus and Europa (when we eventually get there, that is).

GRAIL takes video of the dark side of the moon.

Pythons are messing up the Everglades.

A lot, really. First of all, we’re about to chat with Aase Berg and Johannes Gorannson about Berg’s book Transfer Fat It’s the first time we’ve done a translation, and we’re very excited to be able to talk with both the poet and the translator. Look for the transcript later this month.

February’s book is D. A. Powell’s Useless Landscape. Those are in the mail and we’ll start talking about them soon. Look for my essay on why I chose this book later this week. March’s book will be Linda Hogan’s Indios, and Camille Dungy will be leading that discussion.

Finally, this really isn’t book club news, but what the hell. The Rumpus is holding a fundraiser at the AWP convention, so if you’re going to be in Chicago on March 1, come by 826 Chicago. Readers include Nick Flynn, Cheryl Strayed, Peter Orner, Sommer Browning, Brian Spears and Stephen Elliott.

I usually try to start things out on the light side on Saturday mornings. I mean, I haven’t watched Saturday morning cartoons in twenty years now I guess (do they even still exist?) and I’ve traded in sugary cereal for homemade breakfast burritos (so good I included a promise to make them at least once a week in my wedding vows, not that I’m bragging), so why start with a downer?

But this story is too important, and too shitty, to open with a joke. Read this Rolling Stone piece on Anoka, Minnesota and the damage its residents are doing to its teenagers, especially the LGBTQ ones, but also to the bullies who aren’t being called out the way they should be. This community is damaging their next generation.

Now for something lighter. Have you been told you should read Caitlin Flanagan’s Girl Land but you really don’t want to? Here’s the important parts, made more palatable by the use of cat photos.

I’d be wary of this idea if Alan Moore were writing them, but there’s no way this is a good idea.

I think you’ll like this essay, The Admiring Ignorant, by an old friend of mine, William Bradley.

Dahlia Lithwick on how Stephen Colbert is hammering the Supreme Court over Citizens United.

Update: The Susan G. Komen Foundation has reversed its decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood.

I doubt the board of the Susan G. Komen Foundation had any idea what sort of blowback they were going to get when Planned Parenthood announced that Komen had decided to stop funding some of Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer work. After all, the Susan G. Komen foundation and Planned Parenthood have been, in some ways, mirror images of each other in recent years, at least as far as public perception is concerned. The Komen Foundation is pink ribbons and races for the cure and corporate tie-ins and–until this week–maybe the safest corporate donation a company could make, whereas Planned Parenthood has been demonized by right-wing activists and politicians alike as a pro-abortion, pro-child sexual abuse haven of sin and degradation.

But the blowback has been fierce and swift, and most importantly, deserved. People who work with nonprofits have complained about the Komen Foundation for years, from their abusive trademark strategy (where they threaten to sue anyone who uses the phrase “for the cure” or “to the cure” or a pink ribbon) to the way their size makes it harder for smaller nonprofits to raise money, to the salaries of their top executives, to the way breast cancer has become, in some ways, the only women’s disease which matters. …more

The SOPA/PIPA debates have reopened the discussion over the issue of online piracy, over whether or not it’s stealing, over the amount of economic damage it does to content producers, and whether or not the response will destroy the internet as we currently know it. Over at Slate, Matthew Yglesias and Caleb Crain are hashing out the question of copyright. Crain takes Yglesias to school here on the question of whether or not copyright infringement is theft, but even so, I think they miss an important issue. …more

Some interesting symmetries between social networks today and in the Pleistocene.

Rebecca Boyle deals with the question of whether some research is so dangerous that it shouldn’t be pursued.

Crazy solar flares have been causing amazing light shows in the night skies, but they’re having another effect, too–they’re cleaning up some of the space junk in orbit.

Google has a new privacy policy. I can’t tell you what it means, but Scientific American apparently can.

Legos are headed toward space. Leave it to Canadian teenagers, those wacky kids.

Getting a late start today, but I still have some interesting reading for you to do.

Tell me if you’ve heard this story before: legislator puts forth a bill which targets a mostly powerless group of people, then withdraws it when its onerous requirements are potentially turned around on him.

It bears repeating: spending public money on the arts is a good investment if nothing else.

Apple introduced its new iBooks platform this past week (which has some intriguing possibilities for creative work as well). Wired goes into why the college bookstore won’t be going away any time soon.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been having a rough time of it lately. Not only is he facing a recall, he had his State of the State address spoofed by protesters who handed out fake programs. Make sure to look at the actual program.

Who knew this was a problem? Now I feel like I need to head to Oklahoma and try some aborted fetus before it disappears from the food supply. Kind of like when Four Loko was banned in a bunch of places.