Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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The Rumpus Advice Column: “Do you think it’s possible that maybe all of my friend’s vaginas are confused by multiple partners?”
Your letter is full of self-congratulation masquerading as earnest inquiry.
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
Ah, the lovely march of Spring… Who can deny the splendor and joy that May hath wrought?
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Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
It’s a somber weekend, for obvious reasons, but there’s a lot going on in the poetry world, and I’m here to give it to you. Derek Wolcott’s past rears its ugly head in the race for the Oxford professorship of…
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An Essay on Criticism–The Sequel
Normally I would save a link like this for my Poetic Lives Online column later tonight, but this deserves a story all its own. Geoff Nunberg of Language Log is talking about an odd book project: “The text of the…
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Rediscovering the Forgotten
The drive to digitize ancient manuscripts is growing quickly, and in the process, scholars are discovering works they never realized they had. The current technology is good enough that scholars can make sense of scrolls too delicate to be unrolled,…
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The Language of the Beard
As one who determined five years ago, after having shaved my beard off to remind myself what the natural contours of my face looked like, to never go without facial hair again, I’ve often wondered how others interpreted beards. Here’s…
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Craig Arnold: 1967-2009
Not all the details have been released yet, but the word from Japan is that poet Craig Arnold died after suffering a leg injury and falling from a cliff. From the article in the Salt Lake Tribune: “The only relief…
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Verbophobia: About the Phobias in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666
“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom,” by Charles Baudelaire, 2666’s epigram
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Brian’s Saturday Morning Links
Has it been this way since the invention of the portrait? Does every generation look back at family pictures and wonder what the hell they were thinking? Overthinking It has some suggestions for doing prequels–not that Hollywood will listen. To…
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Note To Wall Street: Don’t Player Hate on Pixar
As the release date for Pixar’s latest movie, Up, inches closer, the more annoyed I get thinking about this NY Times article from a couple weeks back, in which the commercial viability of Pixar is questioned because Up might not…
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MANGIA MANGA
Since its 1983 debut as a weekly serial, Oishinbo has sold over 100 million paperback editions in Japan. Yet while Oishinbo is undeniably the granddaddy of food-themed manga I’ve discovered many fine examples of the genre. Below are synopses of…
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The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
Sometimes, reading book blogs can make you feel like you’re watching the paparazzi photograph J-Lo on entertainment television, only J-Lo has gotten ugly, become a man, died, and named herself J.R.R. Tolkien. The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup’s goal is to…