Sweet Bird
Every story needs to begin in a place of stasis, a comfortable zero.
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Posts Tagged: american south
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey discusses her new collection, MONUMENT: POEMS NEW AND SELECTED.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #150: Catherine Lacey
“Honestly, I couldn’t write a non-transgressive woman if I tried.”
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Writing Back to History: A Conversation with Kiese Laymon
Kiese Laymon discusses his new memoir, HEAVY.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #89: In Praise of Tom Petty
Because Petty was so prolific and so popular, the intense craftsmanship of his body of work has been hiding in plain sight.
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Salt of the Earth: A Conversation with John Lingan
John Lingan discusses his new book, HOMEPLACE.
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One Burning Question: A Conversation with Evelyn C. White
“I understood in that moment that my life had changed forever. And it has.”
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How to Become a Poet: A Conversation with Ashley M. Jones
“You don’t have to drink yourself into the Great American Poetry Masterpiece.”
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These Places Surround Me: Talking with Quintan Ana Wikswo
Quintan Ana Wikswo discusses her novel, A Long Curving Scar Where the Heart Should Be, delving into the facets of trauma, and her creative processes.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #125: Tyree Daye
“I think if you are really doing the work, you can’t write about America and not explore race and slavery, and that goes for any writer.”
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To Look for America: A Road Trip, a Soundtrack
One thing I was taught about travel—because my father is a black man born in Alabama in 1950—was that there are safe places for black people to go and places that aren’t as safe.
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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.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Brooke C. Obie
Brooke C. Obie discusses the historical basis for her debut novel, Book of Addis, writing to dismantle white supremacy, and why Black speculative fiction is integral to her survival.
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Nothing Foreign about It: Talking with Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad discusses his debut novel American War, suicide terrorism, fossil fuels, and blankets.
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The Lens Magnifies, the Mirror Reflects: What Photos from the Race War Show Us about Ourselves
[Still photos] grab what otherwise might feel too foreign to understand.
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I Will Not Die for You
Each bug in the water is one less bug on my fruit, I tell myself, ignoring the truth: under the soil, another is born.
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Ward’s Mississippi Is Our Mississippi: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Capturing the Delta in harrowing detail, Ward takes readers on a journey from her own home of the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi State Penitentiary.
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The Possible Absence of a Future: Talking with Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham discusses her latest collection, Fast, the terrifying destruction of our planet, a happy formal accident, and how to live in times of world crisis.
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Voices on Addiction: The Honeybee
She never stopped, a bee buzzing from flower to flower to flower, collecting all the sweetness she could.
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Your Patriotism Isn’t Love, It’s Blindness
Love of country, some argue. With their boots firmly planted in my chest as I struggle to protest. No, that is not love, but blindness.
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There Is Simply No Time for This: Whose Streets? and Civil Rights Cinema
It is unlikely I will see the US justice system evolve toward an egalitarian ideal in my lifetime. But Whose Streets? does offer a clearly visible North Star.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 15): “Southern History”
We can’t hide from our history and we can’t pass it on to future generations.
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Readers Report: The New Patriot
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “The New Patriot.”
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Peeping under the Goddamn Door: The Price of Empathy in S-Town
[F]or the first time, I really see the tradeoffs between privacy and honest-to-god, up-close empathy.
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Literary Rim Shots: A Chat with John Grisham
John Grisham discusses his advice for young writers, the literary mafia, and why he finally wrote a (literal) beach read.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Nikki Wallschlaeger
Nikki Wallschlaeger discusses her new collection Crawlspace, why she chose to work with the sonnet form, and how segregation in American never ended.
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Finding Shelter
A hurricane is coming. Rita is in the Gulf of Mexico and is approaching Houston at a slow but steady pace of nine miles an hour. I don’t have many, or any, illusions that God and Jesus will see us through.
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Lone Star Cinema
In clinging to a set of memories that fade more every day, maybe I’m also clinging to an idyllic version of my own past.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Adrian Matejka
Adrian Matejka discusses his new collection Map to the Stars, writing about poverty in contemporary poetry, and how racism maintains its place in our society.
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