2011
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Charles Graner is out of jail.
Does that name ring a bell? It was one of those names that I saw and knew I’d heard, but couldn’t immediately place where I knew it from. If it weren’t for the headline, I’d probably have never figured it…
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Science Saturday
The TV show Cosmos is coming back, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson as host, and with Seth McFarlane as Producer. Lost in the hubbub over the crashing stock market was the launch of Juno. Here’s what it might discover about Jupiter.…
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Saturday Morning Links
If you’re not going to observe Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s day of prayer, might I suggest the Day of Debauchery & Gluttony. I’ll be the guy with two feedbags and a Bushmill’s IV drip. If you leave your microphone near…
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The Art of Postcard Writing
How many postcards have you written (or received) this summer? This minimal art form, caught up in our hyper-digital world of e-mail, facebook, and cell phones, seems to be slowly but surely disappearing. Read Charles Simic’s reflections on this “lost art”;…
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A Meditation on Humiliation
This beautifully and eloquently written piece by Elizabeth Bachner explores the ways in which we feel and conceptualize the human emotion of humiliation. What is humiliation exactly, and how does it play such a crucial role in literature and in…
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Reviews for the last book we featured in our Rumpus Book Club!
Are you a part of the Rumpus book club? Remember last month’s book, Christopher Boucher’s debut novel How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive? Well, it‘s starting to get great reviews out there. This post on The Millions has referred to the novel…
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The New York Poetry Festival
It’s impossible to discuss last weekend’s first ever “free celebration of the poetry world of New York City” without mentioning the fact that it wasn’t in New York City.
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More Horses Than We Need
Perspective and introspection are plentiful in this fine retrospective collection, but Gallagher doesn’t fully see now. She speculates profoundly and eloquently, metaphysically — never astro/quantum physically, as if from any century — but our own.
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Plotlines in the Digital Age
Nowadays technology is not just changing how we interact with books and movies, but it has changed the plotlines themselves. It has changed the way fictional characters interact with each other, the believability of the plot—it’s destabilizing the fictional landscape.…
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Diagramming Writing
Here is a charming author venn diagram. Authors fall into one or more of three categories: those that write from the head, the mouth, or the heart. Whether or not you agree with the choices and their placement, it might…