SKETCH BOOK REVIEWS: Three Faves
A roundup of great books that didn’t make it into Sketch Book Reviews this year
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January Spotlight: Letters in the Mail
For decades my writing was just for me. Then in the nineties, I discovered communities of queer South Asian artists and activists, radical BIPOC writers. . . . This is when I realized being a writer could be a lifestyle rather than my secret passion.
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A World Where We Are Known and Loved: Shelley Wong’s As She Appears
to be seen is not the same thing as being known
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A joyful expression of femininity and play: Talking dolls with Maria Teresa Hart
In which one Samantha interviews another.
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Anecdotal and Harsh
The thing about trauma is that it can split a person right down the middle. And J. was, indeed, bifurcated in this way. That is, she occupied multiple timelines simultaneously.
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Take Your Divagations Seriously: Geoff Dyer’s The Last Days of Roger Federer
The Last Days . . . has nothing much to do with tennis or with Roger Federer, who appears sparingly in these pages . . . [nor is it] “intended to be a comprehensive study of last things, or of lastness generally.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: On the Farm
On the farm, I understand exactly the degree to which I have come to depend on alcohol, since in the first three weeks I think about it frequently and get worried and even look for it twice in the farmer’s house, and on the fourth week I am less interested, and on the fifth week I do other things.
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The Answers Usually Come from Somewhere Unexpected: An Interview with Emma Winsor Wood
If you go to a poetry reading, the aphoristic moments are usually where the audience lets out a collective “hmmm” or “ahhh”—almost before the poet has finished the sentence.
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What to Read When You Want to Slip Away
A list from YZ Chin of works in translation
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ENOUGH: Landlines
Before my father killed her, my mother spent her evenings telling me the story of how she came to America. Every night, the way she started was with something new.
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A Rumpus Poetry Gift Guide
Poetry for everyone
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RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: GARDEN by Gabrielle Bates
An excerpt from The Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s January selection, JUDAS GOAT by Gabrielle Bates forthcoming from Tin House Books on January 24, 2023
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American Mothers are Screaming: A conversation with Jessica Grose
I think people want more unstressed time with their kids. I think so much of the time we are spending with our kids we are exhausted, and we have all this other stuff on our minds that’s mentally draining, physically draining. But the answer is not always more childcare.
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Space to Breathe
We inhale when we’re born, then breathe and breathe and breathe until one day we exhale our final breath.
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The Art of Attention: Jill Christman’s If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays
“If you really want to look at someone, then your only option is to look at yourself, squarely and deeply.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Chicken
I used my fingers on the neighbor and he liked it.
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Boys and Oil: Taylor Brorby on Making Space for Queer Stories on the Great Plains
I developed two books. One I called “The Gay Book,” and one I called “The North Dakota Book.” Well, those are the same book, as you can imagine.
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Voices on Addiction: Whatever Fatal Thing
D— was dreamy in the precise manner of Neil Young circa 1974. Long, dark hair; green eyes; great butt; nice smile. He was sweet, funny, just tall enough. Wore a felt hat with a hatband he’d beaded himself, and a feather. Drove a forty-year-old turquoise-and-white Ford pickup with a broom and shovel in the gun […]
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Threats of Violence: Discussing Pain, Form, and Cinema du Corps with Author Stephanie LaCava
There is a hyper self-awareness in all my work that acknowledges—teases itself, maybe—what it is addressing and from what entry point. I once modeled in a campaign for socks I designed for a skate label and on the box there was a small excerpt from one of my books.
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The Last Book
The poet goes to the supermarket for peanut butter. The poet cleans the toilet. The poet responds to emails.
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When Writing about Pain is Political: In Sensorium by Tanaïs
In In Sensorium . . . Tanaïs inhabits their pain fully and seeks new ways to describe and transcend it through scent, rather than just words.
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: Mr. Burley
My favorite was usually the smallest, the most alive.
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Embracing the Half-Wild Creature: A Conversation with Sara Moore Wagner
That giant “unknown” that we’re hurtling towards is so vast. One day we’ll be torn apart by it.
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RUMPUS BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: USERS BY Colin Winnette
Subscribe by January 15 to the Poetry Book Club to receive this title and an invitation to an exclusive conversation with the author via Crowdcast
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Revising Time: Nonlinear Memory in Brian Tierney’s Rise and Float
I’m getting too close to the poems, but Tierney’s collection demands a closeness.
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I want their view of the world altered for the better: A conversation with Zein El-Amine
I believe that we wield whimsy to gain the malleability to adjust to the harshness of the human condition, and this is especially true when you live in war torn countries.
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Indiana Anomie: Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington
a portrait of the American tendency to keep the suffering of others at arm’s length as if misfortune were contagious, or to ruthlessly eliminate it entirely
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Prepare a Table Before Me, Anoint My Head with Oil
Before I understood that I was a girl, I understood that I was a body.
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