Kinsella describes; he does not prescribe. He rests less comfortably in his retreat than Thoreau and without the surety that he lives an exemplary life.

…more

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.

All Is Love

Sorry. I’m wrong. Everyone lives alone. All
is not love. All is whatever happens next,
and whatever happens next, of course, happens
in due course, its course, not yours. But all is love, …more

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.

While John Berryman Drives In His Orange Chevrolet Through A Minnesota Rainstorm
To Lecture On Don Quixote, Sylvia Plath Paints The Beehives of Court Green

While John Berryman drives in his orange Chevrolet through a Minnesota rainstorm
to lecture on Don Quixote, Sylvia Plath paints the beehives of Court Green,
stroking one stern white coat after another on the hive, …more

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.

Terra Incognita

Counting scars of gum on the stairs down
from the Dome I briefly felt joy

even though I’d just read, in the World or Times,
that some of my fellow citizens …more

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.

Mnemosyne to the Poet

For you, memory is but
an oil lamp to snuff, left to
smoke. Diademed by earth’s
velvet mantle. So easy

for you to ignore: hadal
press of sea, the open
vein’s tasseled plumes,
how they wheel

like a maelstrom up & down.
My sight spills through
waves of old, blown
glass. I am not permitted

to turn, pillow to cheek,
& wait for sleep to find me.
Am not permitted
to learn how not to look.

-Rebecca Dunham

If you like what the Rumpus is doing for National Poetry Month, you’ll probably like this multimedia anthology of original poems we’ve run at The Rumpus over the last three years. Available only for iPad. Check it out!

There’s a reason Philadelphia poet CA Conrad’s latest work rushes down the page like water, collecting in small pools of words glazed in light and reflection: CA Conrad is some body. …more

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

I found this text to be profound, relentless, frustrating, inspiring, demanding, silly, pompous, elastic, and mind-expanding. That is what poetry is for, and this is for poetry.

…more

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.

Mirror

All day I had been photographing boats.
A study in angles: light on water, …more

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.

Skin Like Brick Dust

In bed, your back curved
to answer the heat of my holding …more

Ahmed’s roots construct a more nuanced Americana, as we follow Ahmed through the industrial American cities where she calls herself citizen (read: “free”), to her always-estranged returns to Dhaka.

…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.

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 Robot Scientist’s Daughter [brushes with death]

drowned when she was three. …more

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.

Big Legs on the Bus

How old could you be
And still popping your collar? …more

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.

Alternate Ending: My Grandmother As Gretel

“Hansel and Gretel is the saddest story;
it’s the one where hunger comes first.
~ Frederick Busch

…more

When Paul Tunis emailed me and asked if I’d be interested in looking at a comic he’d drawn in collaboration with the poet Melissa Broder, my answer was an unequivocal yes. I’d have said yes even without the excuse of National Poetry Month or a scheduled review of Broder’s book. Click on more to see why I was so excited. …more

There is dissonance here between expectation and want, a dichotomy as digestible as life and death, or heaven and earth

…more

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.

between the wolf and the dog

a freight train splits the difference
between dark and not-yet-light:
inter lupum et canem: enter smoke
in shreds: the wolf sniffs out a glowing
hub of ash: finds the scent of the man
who built the fire: between flame
and smolder: pelage and fur: enter
a night in single digits: enter the outlaw
and a pack of shadows takes him: in:
between fang and tooth: ember and smudge:
exit the galaxy: its nest: oh: enter
that egg: the star that blinds him:

-Davis McCombs

If you like what the Rumpus is doing for National Poetry Month, you’ll probably like this multimedia anthology of original poems we’ve run at The Rumpus over the last three years. Check it out!

From these two new books, the reader can gather that it isn’t just the day that is strong and can withstand change, but the same words can be applied to the speakers of these poems and to Myles herself. …more

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.

15 minutes

the beaming sun
sun
out there …more

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

As if to heed Hecate’s rebuke, to show the dire glory of her art, Szporluk’s poems speak with a voice unhinged by an unyielding despair. Teeming with submerged violence and opaque anger, they swirl, futile, in the face of our helpless human finitude, “our speck of pig-universe.”

…more

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.

On Style

Henri Matisse died of a heart attack
staring at the open-mouthed
windows facing the alpenglow …more

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 Strangers

1

Mostly, I hope.

2

In the industry of specifics, I list my Sally-trees, my letters to Paul. …more

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.

I May Have Made Something Up

They’re put in a pot, a way of praying.
I forget—does the pot have a name? What-
ever: this light, this book, the thick red this
menstrual blood—you see the care. You first see

just the head in a circle. The image
starts growing. It was impossible to
think of it—its real self. “This” is simply
a code word, the letters indistinct. This

issue came up of the object. I can’t
decipher: sacramental souvenir?
a circle? an adornment? the music
of the revolution? the dream option?

It’s a part of the image: the woman
as house, bakery, clock. When it stopped (but
how many days were counted by it), she
says, “You can bring it to life again,” and

the minute finger moved when I picked it
up. I swear. I couldn’t protect myself
with this miraculous skill. I wanted
to get help. A mother needs that. Do you

know that you were born?

-Jennifer Perrine

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.

Ghost Keep Us Moving, Stella Said, Think
About a Field at Night, How You’re Aways

surrounded by night-spit
            stars-— tips of water-

                        moccasin fangs, always feeling …more

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.

Do You? …more

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 First Kiss

the first kiss was memento mori the second one aspiration the third
            audition
the fourth       a posture            the fifth a neurosis       the sixth was …more

But even here, vertigo and ambivalence dominate, and I find myself searching the poems for the kinetic energy of a walker in the city; heel marks and muddy droplets. I want to overhear conversations on the streets.

…more