Whence the Banjo? The Rumpus Interview with Béla Fleck and Sascha Paladino
Throw Down Your Heart, the new documentary by banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and his filmmaker brother Sascha Paladino, follows Fleck on a musical heritage tour of Africa.
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Rumpus Articles
Landscapes with a corpse
Japanese photographer Izima Kaoru invited actresses and models to reveal their fantasies about a perfect death, the circumstances, location, and designer they’d like to be wearing. the results, entitled “Landscapes…
The Uncensored Tintin
The importance of Tintin to the medium of comics can’t be overstated. Tintin anticipated creator-ownership, lengthier serial publications, and the globalization of comics, laying the groundwork for comics like American…
Photographing Mexico’s Drug War
Since 2006 there have been some 9,500 deaths resulting from the Mexican government’s attempts to thwart drug cartels, putting an end to decades of passivity. In the last week Barack…
Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
Harriet wants to know what stereotypes you associate with poets. This could get funny. Speaking of funny, the comment thread in this piece about Ugly Duckling Press is wonderful, especially…
The Death of the Vodka Snob?
I’ve never understood the argument for super-premium vodka–vodka is supposed to be, by definition neutral (don’t get me started on flavored vodkas), so what, outside the stylishness of the bottle,…
“And Day Brought Back My Night”
Animated poem read by Geoffrey Brock. Part of Poetry Everywhere, produced by the Poetry Foundation in association with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Animation by Daniel Wilkins.
Detroit’s Beautiful Ruins
A haunting essay/slide show about Detroit. The day before I arrived, the frozen body of a man was found in the elevator shaft of an abandoned warehouse; only the feet…
Saturday Morning Links
Rory McInnes, budding artist in search of attention from Google Earth. And as long as I’m acting like a twelve year old, a Florida eighth-grader gets kicked off the school…
Life’s Only as Bad as You Make It Out to Be
Chris Feliciano Arnold reviews Nami Mun’s debut novel, Miles from Nowhere.