The Art of Shame
Wayne Koestenbaum’s Humiliation considers the humiliations of our lives and culture – from Liza Minelli to Eliot Spitzer to his own father.
Features & Reviews
9302 posts
Grieving for Writers I’ve Never Known
Five years ago on a tiny island in the Aegean, I cried for Kurt Vonnegut as I sat in the tub, holding in one hand the long, low-pressure shower hose…
The Rumpus Interview with Susie Deford
Susie DeFord and I both finished drafts of our books in 2007. My former dog-trainer and I had labored together at café tables side by side, but after the writing…
Profoundly Compassionate
If you harbor desires for truly deserved happy endings and sharply drawn prose, then you will relish every page of Liz Moore’s new novel Heft.
In Praise of the Long, Lunatic Novel
More often than not, the best surprises arrive in unmarked brown boxes. In this case the mysterious contents appeared to be harmless enough, despite the intimidating immensity of the thing:…
The Sunday Rumpus Interview with Lisa Carver
I first heard of Lisa Carver in the late 1980s, when we were both about 19 or 20. Performing under the name Lisa Suckdog in shows that involved screeching, screaming, pissing,…
Decades of Nothing Between
These poems are often about the strange, complex and imperfect mapping of nature—human and wild—onto our 21st century lives.
My Fruit Bat, My Gewgaw
These poems are about unintentional association, the ways our minds wander even when — especially when? — they’re trying to wrap themselves around a given idea.
Swinging Modern Sounds #34: Excesses of Penis
The early, formative period of rock and roll criticism produced three great and indelible voices, three voices that have gone on to influence every writer who has written about popular…
R.I.P. Wislawa Szymborska
“Wislawa Szymborska, a gentle and reclusive Polish poet who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, died on Wednesday in Krakow, Poland. She was 88.” Learn more about Szymborska’s life…
Adventures in the Narrative
Lawrence Weschler’s collection of essays, Uncanny Valley, compiles some his best essays with the same perspective that he brings to each essay – an impulse to find the subtle convergences…