The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Alexis Ivy
“Writing in this way allows me to put order in this disordered world.”
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Posts Tagged: Allen Ginsberg
He’s Funny That Way
A week before our reception, three days married, I beckon Peter to come listen to the song I’ve chosen for our first dance.
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Gospel That Kicks Up the Dust: Neck of the Woods by Amy Woolard
Tenderness lies between the sharp and the sweet.
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Barbara Berman’s National Poetry Month Shout-Out
Barbara Berman reviews seven poetry collections to celebrate National Poetry Month.
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Keeping Yiddish Alive: A Conversation with Josh Lambert
Josh Lambert discusses the anthology HOW YIDDISH CHANGED AMERICA AND HOW AMERICA CHANGED YIDDISH.
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A Time and a Place: Talking with Faylita Hicks
Faylita Hicks discusses her debut poetry collection, HOODWITCH.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “First Amendment (in the moment, grotesquely exotic)”
I am not certain where I was when I first heard about the marketplace of ideas.
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Two Extraordinary Books: Bullets into Bells and Inquisition
The obscenities and tragedies of American life pile up with speed, and in quantities, that are appalling.
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Reading Ferlinghetti in the Age of Trump
This lesson feels especially relevant to our moment: that it’s possible to be both a frustrated activist and also a present and joyful human being.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #24: Must I Be an Angry April Fool?
When I attended professional acting school back in 1986 (the MFA program at UC Irvine, I proudly remark), I had a teacher ask me once, “Charles, are you able to feel any authentic emotion other than anger?” I paused for a bit and considered the question, before answering, truthfully, “No. I don’t suppose I can.” […]
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #21: Not Yesterday’s Demonstrations
1972: War was waging in Vietnam and kids were coming home in boxes. Hippes and yippies went clean for Gene McCarthy, but George McGovern won the democratic nomination. Tricky Dick Nixon was the one for the Republicans and the so-called Silent Majority. I was a sixteen-year-old runaway revolutionary of peace and love, living in a commune, […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Joe Ide
Joe Ide discusses his debut novel, IQ his writing process, and why he enjoys fly fishing.
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The Rumpus Interview with Erik Kennedy
Poet Erik Kennedy discusses literary community and his formative years as a young writer in New Jersey, and shares two new prose poems.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #14: Altered States?
In my last column, the Muse inspired me to write about dreams. And since then, I’ve been thinking about other types of altered consciousness. As a guy who often hangs out with Catholic monks, and who practices “Will Rogers spirituality”—that is, I’ve never met a religion I didn’t like—I take an interest in miracles and […]
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The Rumpus Interview With Jeremy Earl
Jeremy Earl discusses his latest album, City Sun Eater in the River of Light, the fruitful tension of city vs. country, finding beauty in the darkness of today’s world, and the enduring good vibes of the Grateful Dead.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Keith Newton
What’s interesting, of course, is how modern life could easily be seen in the opposite way—as an ever-expanding domain of individuality and self-expression.
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The Rumpus Interview with Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar discusses Singaporean poetry in the last fifty years, Hindu mythology, translation, and his complicated relationship to his heritage.
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The Rumpus Interview with William Hjorstberg
William Hjorstberg talks about his new book, the heady writing days in Livingstone, Montana, being a “Hollywood whore,” and the finer points of Richard Brautigan.
...moreCardboard Cutouts
For the Guardian, Lynette Lounsbury shares her adolescent experience reading the beat writers and coming to realize that there was little “space” for women in the beatnik world: I read more Kerouac, The Dharma Bums my favourite, and then I read Cassady and Ginsberg and Burroughs. I loved the beat generation and the men in it. […]
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Primal Talk
One of the thrills of being a writer is becoming aware of the wildness that percolates inside of you. If you’ve learned to listen, you’re able to hear it.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath talks about his new collection, XX: Poems For The Twentieth Century, capitalism, history, and what it might mean to write a wordless poem.
...moreIntroducing Allen Ginsberg
Over at Lit Hub, Bill Morgan introduces a selection of Allen Ginsberg’s poems from the upcoming Wait Till I’m Dead: At times he grew weary of the work and complained that he was overburdened, but the complaint often took the shape of a poem itself. Once he wrote back to one of his solicitors, “Want […]
...moreThe First Bohemian
The Public Domain Review examines the work of Elizabethan writer Robert Greene, the original Bohemian, and the first known reviewer of William Shakespeare: Greene’s chief target was “an upstart Crow,” who “supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you”…He has a “tiger’s heart, wrapped in a […]
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Barbara Berman’s 2015 Holiday Poetry Shout-Out
Barbara Berman offers some gift suggestions for the poetry lovers in your life. Or just for you. Treat yourself!
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Remarks On Walking Around in Boston
As you walk, you become intensely aware in two directions. There is the outer world, and there is your head space. It is not necessary or possible really to keep strict focus on one or the other. They blend together.
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The Rumpus Interview with Austin Bunn
Austin Bunn talks about his new story collection, The Brink, his latest script for a short film, In the Hollow, working in multiple mediums, and why some novels read like early drafts of screenplays.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Midnight in the Century
…today’s poetry apologists for the Iraq war just keep repeating their intelligence error odes. Wouldn’t it be better, however, if they would address the horror of the failed effort in Iraq?
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
You can count on One Story as a sort of literary sieve, distilling story-sized servings of up-and-coming writers we should know, and soon enough will know, if we don’t know them already. Next week, One Story will host its annual Literary Debutante Ball, a party thrown in honor of those who’ve published stories with them and […]
...moreHip Hip for Howl
To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, a veritable smorgasbord of celebrities came together at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles to put on a variety show for the ages. Hal Willner, a longtime musical producer for SNL, brought together performers from Lucinda Williams to Courtney Love and Amy Poehler to Tim Robbins, […]
...moreShame and Shamelessness
I’m more interested in someone like…Allen Ginsberg…people who are shameless because they have a sense of shame. What they’re really trying to do is to change the face of shame itself. Ginsberg was an ethical person, but he grew up ashamed of his mother’s insanity and ashamed of his own sexuality. And what he managed […]
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