Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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The Best of It
Kay Ryan has been compared to Emily Dickinson, and I like to imagine Dickinson and Marianne Moore reading her with sly commiseration. Unlike some poets with recognizable styles, Ryan does not write the same poem again and again, and her…
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Paper Fight
We’ve previously mentioned the fascinating battle taking place in San Francisco between the city’s two weekly newspapers: The San Francisco Bay Guardian (who won a $21 million dollar judgment against Village Voice Media for monopolistic practices) and the VVM-owned SF…
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A Tipsy Tribute to the Leading Literary Lush of the Emerald Isle: Brendan Behan
At least as well known for his boozing as for his books, iconic Irish author Brendan Behan (1923 – 1964) was a rollicking, larger-than-life Gaelic knockabout—a foul-mouthed, furry-chested stereotype of the drunken Paddy. In fact, the polemical playwright and legendary…
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Why Don Pedro Drinks
“Why Don Pedro Drinks” by José Marín Cañas Translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert “Why Don Pedro Drinks” is from José Marín Cañas’ 1929 collection of crepuscular tales about alcoholics, The Rum Bums (Los bigardos del ron). Nobody had any idea, until…
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Reviewing the Reviews
“Why do Tao’s negative book reviews seem to always cite as evidence Tao’s gimmickry?” Brandon Scott Gorrell, author of During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present, has posted a review concerning negative reviews of Tao Lin‘s…
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“Good” May Not Be Good Enough
“The recent recession hit the book industry just like it did every other business, and even though we’re emerging from the chasm, book sales haven’t completely recovered, so publishers are being much more careful than they were a few years…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Dear Augusta” by Reginald Dwayne Betts
“Dear Augusta” by Reginald Dwayne Betts speaks for itself as a whole art piece, horrifying and beautiful and eye-widening, and I’m finding it pretty difficult to write about it at all but it is definitely the last poem I’ve loved…
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Morning Coffee
Spring! (almost) German prison cells are mostly nicer than my apartment. Words get in David Byrne’s way. Technically this is about old type interfaces, but let’s be honest here it’s just typewriter design porn. The sun is out today, and…