Other
-
Words Before the Doors Close
For a certain segment of the American Mennonite population, a segment whose ancestors passed through and lived in Germany, the language of the old country was low German. Low German’s Jewish counterpart is Yiddish–and it even sometimes sounds like it.…
-
But What Do We Really Want?
If you haven’t read Daniel Bergner’s recent article in The New York Times Magazine, “What Do Women Want?” or better yet, his book, The Other Side of Desire, you should, if only to prepare for The Rumpus’s imminent interview with…
-
THE EYEBALL: Brazil
Yesterday I got laid off from my day job at a tech company. This got me thinking about an unpublished essay I wrote a couple years ago about my relationship to the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. Here it is. –Ryan…
-
Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
I guess it just took a little time for the poetry blogs to realize that David Orr had been in the NYTBR smack-talking about the lack of greatness in poetry today, because this week, there were lots of responses, from…
-
Poems for an Economic Collapse
Katy Lederer’s poems are both romantic and political in nature. With their attention to formal and lyrical concerns, these poems tackle the problems of desire when it coincides with money and passion.
-
Gender-Specific Sins
Survey based on Catholic confessions found that the most common sin for women was pride (followed by envy and anger), while the most common sin for men was lust (followed by gluttony and sloth). The report was based on a…
-
Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
Whoever wrote this poem lo those many years ago ought to be forced to wear those shorts. I’m really surprised there hasn’t been more of a response to David Orr’s piece in the NY Times Book Review last week. Are…
-
The Best Word Book Ever, Then and Then
In 1991, the editors of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever made some key editorial changes in an effort to level the race, gender and religious biases of the original 1963 edition. The side-by-side comparison offers a composite look at…
-
Rediscovering the West
As much as these poems tap into a mythic story of the West, they are not linear narratives, but circuitous maps of anxiety and desire, a portrait of an inner world masquerading as meditations on people and place.
-
…Is Another Man’s Fertility Fetish
The main character in Karan Mahajan’s novel, Family Planning, is a man who is only attracted to his wife when she is pregnant. “He liked the smooth, alien bulge of her stomach or the tripled heartbeat when they made love,…
-
The Eyes of Our Skin Are Closed
The enchantment of Dangerous Laughter is not merely a function of the tales themselves, but also of the way in which Millhauser tells them – with careful, attentive prose that is rich in detail yet never overwhelming.
-
The Boss from the Hell Bosses Already in Hell Get Sent To
From the self-employed comfort of my couch and a distance of about thirty years, oil company CEO Edward “Tiger Mike” Davis gives excellent memo; his contemptuous, petty rants read like the love song of Daniel Plainview. But for anyone unlucky…