Entering an Open Doorway: Marjorie Agosín’s Las Islas Blancas / The White Islands
Agosín’s poems, though quiet and seemingly simple, linger with an interior elasticity that does not break. ...more
Posts Tagged: poetry
Why I Chose Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
When I read one of Kaveh Akbar's poems, I often find myself entranced by the beauty of his lines and marveling at how both the lines and the poems contain incredible strength in seeming delicacy. ...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #97: Peg Alford Pursell
Peg Alford Pursell discusses SHOW HER A FLOWER, A BIRD, A SHADOW, openness, brevity, lyricism, and the benefit of dwelling in our emotions. ...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Iris Dunkle
Iris Jamahl Dunkle on her new collection Interrupted Geographies, writing against the pastoral tradition, the power of persona poems, and the town of Pithole. ...more
The Possible Absence of a Future: Talking with Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham discusses her latest collection, Fast, the terrifying destruction of our planet, a happy formal accident, and how to live in times of world crisis. ...more
Fighting the Erasure of Poet Liu Xia
Liu Xia is a Chinese poet. Her husband, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Laureate and dissident, died recently in prison. Liu Xia, who has been under strict house arrest for ten years, remains unable to speak or travel freely. Friends who have tried to contact her have failed.
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A Reluctant Chronicling: Natalie Shapero’s Hard Child
“I typically hate discussing the past,” the speaker admits in the title poem, “Hard Child,” then a few poems later, a little more defensively—“I swear to God I hardly think of the past." ...more
Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Frank X Walker
But I am not trading in fear. / I am only afraid / that they have been in captivity / so long they won't recognize my scent. ...more
In Between the In-Between: Talking with Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang discusses her story collection Sour Heart, trying to escape the past, collective versus individual responsibility for trauma, and love as imprisonment. ...more
More Than Vicarious: Conflation and ALOHA / irish trees
In this intimate, auditory format, you can hear the poets’ pages crinkling as they turn them—such a reassuring sound—turning pages instead of scrolling screens! ...more
Both Beauty and Horror: Water & Salt by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Tuffaha harnesses the legerdemain of lyric to link love and grief, anger and hope. ...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Achy Obejas
Achy Obejas discusses her new collection, The Tower of the Antilles, what she's learned from translating works of others, and why we should all read poetry every day. ...more
A Poethead’s Guide to the Galaxy: Talking with David Hernandez
David Hernandez discusses his most recent poetry collection, Dear, Sincerely, working across multiple genres, and why the act of making anything is a kind of optimism. ...more
Rumpus Original Poetry: “PatRIOT” by Xavier Cavazos
When all gods are dead & Allah means the same as Christ on the Cross / & Christ on the Cross means the same as detonation— ...more
Why I Chose Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s Rocket Fantastic for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s third collection, Rocket Fantastic, is a beautiful book which asks the reader to live in a world where gender and language are both fluid and linked together in a dance which swings, sways, and surprises at every turn.
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At the Intersection of Personal and Political: Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now edited by Amit Majmudar
American writers have a long, distinguished history of calling out injustice. ...more
Beauty Undercut by the Possibility of Terror: Afterland by Mai Der Vang
Precariousness is an essential condition of life for the people who populate Vang’s poems, especially the Hmong refugees on whom the poet’s eye most lovingly lingers. ...more
#SuicideGirls: Why I Teach Sylvia Plath
But let’s not forget: feminism is, at least in part, about choice, and portions of life are play, not politics. Play and relationships and creativity and whatever we want. ...more
Rumpus Original Poetry: “Mewl” by Sarah Lyn Rogers
Still, something tells me God’s chosen // weren’t hate-mongering gropers (or worse). Just a hunch. A woman’s / intuition. ...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 15): “Southern History”
We can’t hide from our history and we can’t pass it on to future generations. ...more
On the Front Lines
When you pick up a pen instead of a rifle, you’re fighting an entirely different battle. This is my duty. This is my patriotism. ...more
Color Is a Language in Itself: Mahtem Shiferraw Discusses Fuchsia
Mahtem Shiferraw discusses her debut collection, Fuchsia, how she uses color to understand the world and to communicate, and why her work continually addresses displacement. ...more
Reclaiming the Language of Pop Culture: Reversible by Marisa Crawford
Marisa Crawford’s Reversible is an evocative collection, showcasing the ways in which pop culture saturates us with meaning, and how it teaches us to become. ...more
A Funny Inevitability: In Conversation with Siel Ju
Siel Ju discusses her debut novel-in-stories, Cake Time, the difference between our online selves and real-life selves, and who she hopes will read her work. ...more
What Is Being Charted Here?: Talking with Jennifer S. Cheng
Poet and essayist Jennifer S. Cheng discusses her collection House A, working "in the dark," and the idea of home. ...more
The Impossible Question: Vagrants & Accidentals by Kevin Craft
How are we to live when loss—personal, environmental, and political—is heaped upon loss? ...more
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Lisa Factora-Borchers
Lisa Factora-Borchers talks about being a Catholic feminist, writing across genres, and pushing back against a singular narrative about New York. ...more
(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Kirsten Irving
The pressure to prove ourselves can have a distorting effect, causing us to doubt our instincts in favor of following others we perceive to be experts or “genuine.” ...more
Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Eileen G’Sell
At best, life is hard. / At worst, life is easy. / I believe it is true. / I would like to believe / I believe it is true. ...more
Why I Chose Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s Interrupted Geographies for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
I still remember the time many (many) years ago, as an undergrad, when my professor dropped Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Sir Walter Ralegh’s response on the class and launched into a discussion of the pastoral tradition.
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