Posts by author
Max Gray
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Song of the Day: “Lord, Help the Poor and Needy”
Maybe growing up with a father who was a Jehovah’s Witness caused Charlyn Marie “Chan” Marshall to develop a sensitivity to the plight of the unlucky and underprivileged. Then again, Marshall, who is widely known by her stage name Cat…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, in Rumpus Saturday Fiction, Sherman Alexie’s shares three short stories—”Fixed Income,” “Honor Society,” and “Valediction”—that all offer his trademark whimsy and insight into the human condition. Three different teenagers struggle with poverty, endemic racism, and social exclusion, and must…
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Song of the Day: “Secret Life”
The passing of songwriter Leonard Cohen last Thursday added another mournful chapter to an already difficult week. The prolific and underrated artist—most famous, perhaps, for his aching ballad “Hallelujah,” popularized by John Cale, Rufus Wainwright, and Jeff Buckley—had a long career of ups and…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks complicates stereotypes of the lower classes in a comic spoof of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his famous wife, Zelda. Then, in the Saturday Essay, Melissa Kingbird recounts her experience at Standing Rock, on the outskirts of a Native…
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Song of the Day: “Hurt”
“I hurt myself today,” Johnny Cash sings in one of the last recordings he made, his poignant cover of the Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt.” The song couldn’t be more appropriate now, during this week of confusion and heartache and regret.…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, in Saturday Rumpus Poetry, Connie Voisine shares three new poems. Body shaming is the subject of “Shameful,” in which the speaker considers modeling herself after someone else, “like a person on TV,” but she only watches English programs “where actors…
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Song of the Day: “Helpless”
Neil Young’s name has become synonymous with a special brand of rock music that came of age in the 60s, matured in the 70s, and burned on well past its contemporaries. From the laid back Buffalo Springfield, to the soaring…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks shares a special Halloween essay he’s illustrated for us. Meanwhile, in the Saturday Essay, Evan Lavender-Smith reveals takes a frank and humorous look at self-image. “Character Evan” is attractive, fit, responsible, and mature; a good husband and father. But “real…
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Song of the Day: “8 (circle)”
It takes courage and artistic vision to take risks with music that has already won you commercial success, but lasting artists persist in doing just that. Bon Iver’s third album, 22, A Million, supports this view. The familiarly warm and affecting…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, b: william bearheart shares a heart-wrenching and lyrical Saturday Essay on suicide, the struggle against depression and anxiety, and the role of poetry as an effective medicine. Hope and a hidden spirituality imbue a cliff, the site of many…
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Song of the Day: “I Want You”
Allegedly covered and sampled by musicians as diverse as Madonna and Diana Ross to Mary J. Blige and Robert Palmer, the innovative single “I Want You,” off Marvin Gaye’s 1976 album of the same name, branches out from the Motown sound that typified…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, in the Saturday Interview, Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp and Tommy Pico discuss Pico’s book-length poem, IRL, and its themes of temporality, Indiginous identity, and lyrical humor. IRL (which stands for ‘in real life’) reflects a “terrifying” and cathartic creative process in which Pico…