The Rumpus Mini Interview #109: Anaïs Duplan
"The freedom to have a sovereign identity is so often a trap. It’s impossible."
Poetry
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Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Michael Bazzett
Nothing’s more delicious than licking the salty // fat from your enemies’ bones. Tastes a bit like / chicken.
It’s All Metaphorical: A Conversation with Laurette Folk
Laurette Folk discusses her new collection, Totem Beasts, the role of meditation and dreams in her work, and "seeking some heightened experience in the conscious world."
Stitching America Back Together: A Long Late Pledge by Wendy Willis
It is late for our country. We must look back in dialogue with the founders, examine a patched-together country, an embattled flag, and consider how to stop floundering.
A Hinging Thing: Talking with Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith discusses her new collection Good Bones, how motherhood has changed her writing, and what it felt like to have a poem go viral.
Chewing Rocks: A Conversation with David Biespiel
David Biespiel discusses his new book, The Education of a Young Poet, being comfortable in uncertainty, and extending moments in writing.
Both Outsider and Participant: Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi
In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain.
An Answer Should Lead to Another Question: Talking with Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout discusses Conflation, a vinyl recording from Fonograf Editions that “interrogates the difference between texture and tactile; thing unspoken versus thing unseen.”
Playing with Genre: Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling
Whether you read it as poetry or memoir, this collection will invite you into the delicate balance between the challenging, sometimes squalid, human condition and the beauty and sadness of the transcendent.
Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Rachel McKibbens
I cut off my nose, / her nose collapses. / Chop down my hair & / hers shrieks from the sink. / How many poems do I / have to write ‘til she / gets dead, how many / live-wire syllables?
A Deeply Human Act: Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
What is so extraordinary about this collection is its lyricism, its humanity, and its urgency.
There Is No Break: A Conversation with Nicole Homer
Poet Nicole Homer discusses her debut collection, Pecking Order, writing motherhood from many angles, and the importance of representation in the media.