Rumpus Original
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I Hotel
The National Book Award finalist explores the roots of Asian American activism and paints a vivid portrait of revolutionary San Francisco.
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The Rumpus Interview with Gerald Stern
There’s a black and white photo in which the poet Stanley Kunitz lovingly holds Gerald Stern’s cheeks in both hands. It’s 1990. They’re looking into one another, and Kunitz says, “You’re the wilderness in American poetry.”
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A Shoe-Seller Speaks
I met Lauren (whose last name we are suppressing here) at a writing workshop in Provincetown almost fifteen years ago. She was shy, funny, brilliant, and very, very talented, and she dressed like one of those kids who had been…
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Interviews Elizabeth Alexander
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club talks with Poet Laureate Elizabeth Alexander about her poetry collection, Crave Radiance.
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Things That Work Are Muffled and Mute
Through rigorous consideration, with patient generosity, Valerio Magrelli’s poetry allows all his subjects—broken machines, utterances, each of us—to be our own streets, and in such a transfixing world, a circle closes around Kant: things can be both means to an…
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DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #56: Ménage à Trois
Your body knows what it’s hungry for. Feed it.
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Player One
The latest novel from Douglas Coupland critiques contemporary culture, but lacks fresh perspectives.
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The Funny Women Interview with Amy Sedaris
Feeling down? Make a Self-Esteem Shell Collage! Write a poem on a piece of paper about you and the ocean and about how you feel about the ocean and why you are special and of course the ocean and then…
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10/40/70 #27: Shadow of a Doubt
This ongoing experiment in film writing freezes a film at 10, 40, and 70 minutes, and keeps the commentary as close to those frames as possible. This week, I examine Shadow of a Doubt, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1943):
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Soften the Razor’s Edge, the Reign of Terror
Many poems, and many more lines, couplets and quatrains in Opal Sunset are superb, making their lesser companions wan imitations of what Clive James can really do when his interior editor and his varied gifts unite.
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Digesting an Elephant–The Rumpus Book Club Reviews The Instructions
What if Infinite Jest and Phillip Roth had a love child, a very angry love child… Large enough to squash a Pekingese, Adam Levin’s The Instructions is staggeringly well-thought-out, bejeweled with references, hints and clues and is unquestionably daunting in…
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Why They Cried
These stories by Jim Hanas are about something important: how much suffering arises in the gap between our public identities and whatever kernel of self is left inside.