“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…
Poetry
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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…
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,”…
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.
“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…
“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,…
“50 American Plays” by Matthew and Michael Dickman
I’ve visited exactly half of the states that make up our federal constitutional republic. I’m counting states that I’ve lived in, vacationed in, or merely driven through. Some of the…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 9 Post-Election Political Poems You Must Read Before You Die
I’m writing this on Tuesday, November 6, Election Day. Full disclosure, today I will vote to reelect the president. As John F. Kennedy once said, “You can milk a cow…
“Feather”: A Rumpus Original Poem by Deborah Ager
Feather Somehow, I thought you’d want to eat alone, A state you’d grown to master—brandy glass, A man behind your chair to fill your plate, A girl to bring you…
“What Is Amazing” by Heather Christle
What Is Amazing by Heather Christle is another illustration of my frustration with the word “critic,” why I think “appreciator” is a closer approximation and why I’m still open to…
Why I Chose Cleopatra Mathis’s “Book of Dog” for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
Camille T. Dungy on why she selected Book of Dog by Cleopatra Mathis for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club in November.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Searching for Sylvia Plath
Here’s a lede that might send you to your room with the vapors: “As a rule the work of women poets is marked by intensity of feeling and fineness of…