Features & Reviews
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This Dictionary Has Oral Sex In It!
I just learned from Jacket Copy that “Menifee school district in Riverside County has removed the 10th edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary from all school shelves after a parent complained about a student running across “oral sex” in its pages.”…
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Salinger Links
Charles McGrath’s obit for The New York Times: “J. D. Salinger, Enigmatic Author, Dies at 91.” Links to every story J. D. Salinger published in The New Yorker. A collection of Salinger’s uncollected works. (via The Faster Times) Janet Malcolm’s…
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J. D. Salinger
“I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetary. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your…
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Defending Memoir, or, The Problem with Taylor
Journalism is hard, underpaid work, and attacking memoir is low hanging fruit, especially when it’s so tied to the celebrity memoir and the platform writer, the worst impulses of the publishing industry.
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Czechoslovakian Expose
The first three parts of this book cover series were titled “Slovakian Expose,” but this was mainly because I found these images at online Slovak bookstores. (See the last part.) The previous posts were in fact a mix of Czech…
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Crimson Colored Raunchiness and Terror
Taste of Cherry is a beautiful, carefully crafted, and sensual display of poetry; the verbal, pyrotechnical, unabashed bravery of the poems is their most significant quality.
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The Rumpus Original (Supersized) Combo with Kara Candito
“I think most contemporary poets occupy a fairly humble place in the universe, that we have few Byronic illusions about our fame. The act of reading my poems to an audience will always be a bit scary.”
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“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
“His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives.” Noam Chomsky on Howard Zinn, who died today at the age of 87.
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Stirring Coffee with a Feather
Margo Berdeshevsky’s work straddles the line between fiction and poetry. Her characters grieve, dream, punish themselves, and try to find harmony between who they are and who they might still be.
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NBCC Finalists Announced
The National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for its 2009 book awards. Among those named are D. A. Powell (whose Rumpus Original Combo can be read here) for poetry and Bonnie Jo Campbell (whose Rumpus Original Combo can…
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Itsi Dreamt That He Went to the Forest
These illustrations are by Isaachar Ryback for In the Forest, a 1922 children’s book by Kvitko. Ryback was a painter born in the Ukraine in 1897. He settled in Berlin in October 1921 and became a member of the Novembergruppe…
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“When I’m Thirsty and When I’m Not”
“Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867): Booze, Opium; Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849): Alcohol, Opiates; Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861): Opium; Stephen King (1947 – present): Booze, Cocaine, Prescription Meds; Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967): Alcohol; Brendan Behan (1923…