Books Behind Bars
“Another day of volunteering at Rikers Island with the NYPL has come to a close. Thursday I went to one of the male detention houses along with my mentor and two other staff members…
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Rumpus Articles
10/40/70 #4: Cleo from 5 to 7
This column is an experiment in writing about film: what if, instead of freely choosing which parts of the film to address, I select three different, arbitrary time codes (in this…
Kipling on Clemens
Mark Twain died one hundred years ago on this date, so you’ll have to forgive us for mentioning the great author twice in one day. The Library of America has…
“Unsung Giant of the Civil Rights Era”
“If Ms. Height was less well known than her contemporaries in either the civil rights or women’s movement, it was perhaps because she was doubly marginalized, pushed offstage by women’s…
Anonymous Attacks
“An extraordinary literary ‘whodunnit’ over the identity of a mystery reviewer who savaged works by some of Britain’s leading academics on the Amazon website has culminated in a top historian…
“A writing-life is not a life.”
“In the immediate days following Ray’s death, I did not teach. Colleagues urged that I take more time off, even the entire semester, but I was eager to return to…
Mark Twain, Literary Critic
“He was less well-known, but no less talented, as a literary critic. Proof of it has resided, mostly unnoticed, in a small library in Redding, Conn., where hundreds of his…
William S. Burroughs in Lawrence
Burroughs in his Kansas home with “Patti Smith, Steve Buscemi, Allen Ginsberg, and various cats.” (via Jewcy)
National Poetry Month: Day 21. “Questions for the Quest” by Reb Livingston
Questions for the Quest Zirconza of the Blest Flare wanted her someday sometime soon. How was she—with those flinty fingers—supposed to feed those slippy fishes? That was the first question.
Morning Coffee
Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon clears a few things up about Ke$ha. There are pictures here of: Salvador Dali jumping, Audrey Hepburn jumping, a dressed-up monkey jumping. The canine as…