Essays Archives - The Rumpus

A Donne for Our Times: on Deed by torrin a. greathouse

Worlds cannot be built from scratch, though, and many of greathouse’s poems find building blocks in existing works. These uses go beyond mere reference and reveal new resonances in even the most familiar sources

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Essays

On Exteriority: David Szalay’s “Flesh”

After a few more one-liners, it becomes clear István is living in pandemic-era England (he vapes now, etc.) and trying to log on to a Zoom meeting with his therapist

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Essays

Finding Baldwin

The books are on the floor, side by side. I begin to pick them up one by one. Lying beneath two old books is this one. The author’s name screams in white on a red strip at the top of the front cover.

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Each Of Us A Pale Blue Dot

An alien observes the little H-shaped space station orbiting an increasingly dilapidated earth and wonders, What are these humans up to? “Why do they go nowhere but round and round?”…

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Essays

The Rumpus Prize in Nonfiction, First Place: Daniel B. Summerhill

A tight plot of land with poverty gripping the neck of its residents even tighter. The same way America held off on recognizing street gangs as an issue until blood was spilt outside of the hood in 1988 in Westwood Village, Oakland officials knew enclosing us that way was a type of genocide.

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Essays

At Disney, I Cry Over the Water Buffalos

There are six of you in Animal Kingdom, in the section called “Asia,” and I joke to my American friends that I am home.

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Essays

An Itch to Scratch

I grew up speaking a different Kannada at home. In Bangalore, I have had to relearn the language all over again.

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Essays

Prince Edward Island

The gas station attendant looks at me and says, "My advice, get out of town." There’s no snark in his voice. He’s worried.

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Essays

To Adopt a Grandparent

“In every interaction there’s someone with power and someone without. If you are the latter, your two most important virtues are patience and persistence.”

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Essays

Home is a Word Unspoken

Our grocery store. Our bank. Our beloved local coffee shop and pizza parlor. I didn’t know where I was until I saw the magnolia tree, rigid and charred.

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