If you were a member of the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, you’d be involved in the conversation Gabrielle Calvocoressi is leading about Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation. You’d also have the book before its official release.
I really enjoyed this piece by Clive James in the latest issue of Poetry. It’s one of those essays that winds around a bit, from Berryman to Shakespeare to Menashe to Ashbery and Wallace Stevens.
Dante Micheaux makes a very good point about semantics and racism and the way white still seems to be the default (conscious or not) when it comes to describing people.
Like Natasha Trethewey, I grew up in one of the areas of the Gulf region that was also devastated by Hurricane Katrina and didn’t get much in the way of news coverage, so I’ll be taking a look at her book on the subject.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is reading William Faulkner right now, and it reminds him of reading Yusuf Komunyakaa.
Congratulations to Friend of The Rumpus Barbara Jane Reyes. Her book Diwata is now available from BOA editions.
