Blogs
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Homebodies by Sarah Jane Sloat
If you open your hands to hold Homebodies, a chapbook of poems by Sarah J. Sloat, you find much about the book itself that makes the act feel personal, private. You’re holding paper and ribbon (the chapbook is bound by…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: A Poet and a President
A funny thing happened on the way to President Obama’s second inauguration Monday. The president’s speech and Richard Blanco’s poem got reversed. Broadly speaking, one’s expectations of political rhetoric is that, at its worst, it reduces complex argument to slogans…
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Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room by Betsy Wheeler
Betsy Wheeler’s Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room has sort of undone me for the month and a half I’ve spent with it, reading it or letting it hang over to the side and reverbrate while I try ways through…
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Confessions of a Good Girl
In my thirties, I have had two abortions, six years apart. I tell no one. I perpetuate the shame of every woman who has ever chosen to terminate an unwelcome pregnancy—with my silence.
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Nick Cave Monday #19: “Straight To You”
Leave it to Nick to create a love song amidst the horrors of judgment day. When God strikes vengeance on us for our sins at Armageddon, Nick isn’t looking for survival, he’s looking for the woman he loves for that…
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Lit-Link Round-up
The National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. And 2013’s Creative Capital grant winners. Greg Olear of The Weeklings interviews the great Francine Prose. Wow, between this and my Atwood interview, Greg and I have had a pretty cool week. Also…
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Links I Like
I have a cold, which means I’m slightly delirious and watching a lot of videos online. In other words: Welcome to Links I Like, Video Edition. Let’s start Saturday with a cartoon. This morning, we’re taking a break from Carson…
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My Scarlet Ways by Tanya Larkin
In age of poetry saturated with the irony and airy nonsense of the last phalanx of the grandchildren of the New York School, it is wonderfully refreshing to read Tanya Larkin’s poems in My Scarlet Ways. She uses a refreshing…
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On Being Optimistic
At my last doctor’s visit, I said, When I am in so much physical pain, I tend to get low. I get very depressed. She said, I’m sure not as bad as some. My doctor thinks I’m her most optimistic…
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Now Make an Altar by Amy Beeder
In Amy Beeder’s poetry, we are surrounded by the refuse and remains of the past: memories and photos of lost generations, the bones and fur of animals used to adorn ourselves, the smell of fallow plants. Her second collection of…
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A FAN’S NOTES, THE RUMPUS SPORTS COLUMN #45: Postseason, Hooters
My friend Snake (he specifically requested this pseudonym) is an English professor, a Tennyson scholar, and a rabid New England Patriots fan.