Rumpus Originals
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Swinging Modern Sounds #13: On Loops
These lines depend on your having a working knowledge of the New York City suburbs.
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Crown of Sonnets
An anthology of stories from the new Russia shows the continuity between contemporary writers and their canonical predecessors
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Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Corner #2: Viper
Writing wretched verse so you don’t have to since 1995. Viper She told me how, as a girl, she slept each night with a different stuffed animal to make the others jealous
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Afghan Star: A Conversation with Tamim Ansary
Pop Idol has been widely imitated throughout the world [American Idol here in the states] , but Afghanistan is possibly the only place where the mere existence of a televised, Western-style talent show amounts to a political statement.
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A History of Violence
In After the Fire a Small Still Voice, love is a difficult, vulnerable salvation—its troubled characters aren’t sure it’s worth the risk.
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The Rumpus Interview With John Vanderslice at Tiny Telephone
The world is just going to continue to fragment, and that’s a great thing. We’ll be fine. Tiny Telephone will be fine.
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Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys
“There’s something unique about being a member of the sex worker club, an instant camaraderie that bonds one to people who would otherwise be strangers, and this chemistry is something of which Sterry can’t get enough.”
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The Importance of Being Still: The Rumpus Interview With Charles Baxter
In his essay, Baxter discusses the degree to which Americans “have distrusted silence and its parent condition, stillness.”
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How to Leave Hialeah
“Crucet is endowed with the double vision that helped Richard Wright and Salman Rushdie describe the lives of marginalized people with poignancy, humor, and rich music.”
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Poetics and Slaughter
2005 saw the seventieth anniversary of the birth of Danilo Kiš. He died of lung cancer in 1989.