Rumpus Originals
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On the Importance of Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling
A couple of years ago the memoirist and fiction writer Chris Offutt urged me to read Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling, first published in 1966. As promised, it was the kind of infrequent reading experience that can only be described…
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #17: The Spider, the Simpleton and the Nonchalant Catch
Imagine a World Series primer narrated by Kenny Powers, the mullet-headed hero of the HBO comedy series “Eastbound and Down.”
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Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Corner #6: The Fruit Standkeeper, Wroclaw
(Writing wretched verse so you don’t have to since 1995) The Fruit Standkeeper, Wroclaw His hands are a thing of beauty, long, thick fingers moving in webs grazing apples and onions settling each into the rusted cradle of his scale,…
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Equinox Oral Histories: “I Can Do This On My Own”
As part of Daniel Nester’s English 251: Interviews and Oral History class, students took trips down to Equinox, a community services center in downtown Albany, New York, to interview some teenagers and young adults who take part in their Youth…
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Sleeper’s Wake
John Wraith’s penis is a neat literary device. It provides character depth and motivation, and is central to every plot twist in the book.
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The Big Book Club
There are books on the NEA’s list that I haven’t read and undoubtedly should read—but unless I’ve made a New Year’s resolution, I prefer to stumble upon my next book.
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Letters Home
Writing by hand does remind you, primally, of what this crazy thing we do is made of. The careful spilling of ink on paper, the joints and girders of letters. Paragraphs as immovable as cornerstones and the proud stab of…
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A Squared-Off Landscape Representing the World
A Village Life is the work of a mature poet looking out at the world from a window, but now concerned with the larger cycles in which she participates, instead of the singular life in a petri dish.
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Listen to Metal on Metal and Everything Will Be Okay
Just because you don’t succeed the way others define success, you’re not a failure. You just chose to take a different path. And who’s to say that’s wrong? I just finished watching Anvil! The Story of Anvil.