Blogs
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Is Franz Wright the Rush Limbaugh of American Poetry?
I had intended this week to write about gratitude. To express my thanks to all the new readers of Poetry Wire and The Rumpus and to wish you all a pleasant Thanksgiving. I wanted to say something about the necessity…
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“I Growed No Potatoes To Write About, Sir”: a Rumpus Original Poem by Erin Belieu
I Growed No Potatoes To Write About, Sir nor bogs, nor fathers, nor special water that was my place alone to make me hard and wise— I did not sow nor bury, nor even try to fudge my nothings in…
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Lit-Link Round-up
The Rumpus reviewed and Stephen, Isaac, Julie and Paul profiled on The Bold Italic. Congrats to editor Elizabeth Collins and TNB Books: The Beautiful Anthology is included in the New York Times’ “Best Bathroom Books of 2012.” Leah Odze Epstein…
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“Baltics” by Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer’s Baltics, a long poem, first appeared in 1974, but this time around Samuel Charters has added a new afterword to his original translation, and his wife Ann Charters has included photographs from 1973 of Tranströmer and his wife at…
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The Last Book I Loved: “Please” by Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown’s Please explores the way love and violence coexist with each other and how the two sometimes intertwine. The collection of poems is categorized by four sections: “Repeat,” “Pause,” “Power,” and finally, “Stop”; the first three sections address self-identification…
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The Rumpus Book Club Interviews Jami Attenberg
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Jami Attenberg about The Middlesteins, the fair portrayal of an overweight protagonist, and food addiction in the face of an unforgiving culture.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Love Poems of David Petraeus
Poetry Wire has learned of the existence of secret love poems by former CIA director David Petraeus.
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THE NEXT LETTER IN THE MAIL: Gabrielle Calvocoressi
The next Letter in the Mail, going out early next week, is from Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Persea. 2005) and Apocalyptic Swing (Persea. 2009), which was a finalist for The…
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“The Apothecary’s Heir” by Julianne Buchsbaum
A winning selection in the 2011 National Poetry Series, Julianne Buchsbaum’s The Apothecary’s Heir interrogates the wildness of nature, the decadence of urban sprawl, and the necessity of myth and history in our daily lives. While her third collection maintains…
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FUNNY WOMEN #90: New Ways to Summit Everest
A blind man, Erik Weihenmayer, summited Everest in 2001. But no blues musician named Blind Everest Summiter has ever summited Everest.
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Lit-Link Round-up
The phenomenal Kathie Bergquist (perhaps the coolest person I can call “my former student”) is launching Ms. Fit, a “web ‘zine dedicated to health, fitness, and wellness from a body-positive, LGBT-friendly feminist perspective.” Look, if you know me, you know…
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“As Long As Trees Last” by Hoa Nguyen
Seattle’s renowned independent press, Wave Books, recently published Hoa Nguyen’s third full-length collection of poems, As Long As Trees Last. In it, Nguyen once again dares to experiment with form, structure, and language to bring us a collection of genuinely…