Books
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What to Read When Falling in Love Hurts
Falling in love for the first time or millionth time—or potentially final time—is never for the faint of heart. Love is messy, reckless, changeable. Love can be unkind, selfish, gut-wrenching, and yet it is capable of producing deep beauty and…
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From the Archive: The Rumpus Interview with Lacy M. Johnson
The Other Side author Lacy M. Johnson talks about the experience of being kidnapped, overcoming trauma, and fighting the George Wills of the world.
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Reading Whitman While White
It is only by holding Whitman accountable for all of his language that we can also love other parts of his language and poetics.
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The Last Poem I Loved: “In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden” by Matthea Harvey
I read poetry for enjoyment now, to feel seen, and to see the world differently.
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The Revolutions of a Sonnet: frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss
The richly historied form of the sonnet is a powerhouse for holding the past.
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The Worlds We Inhabit: Home: New Arabic Poems
These writers expand the meaning of the word home by virtue of their lives and their writing.
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Rites of Passage: Steven Toussaint’s Lay Studies
We are liturgical animals, Toussaint’s poems suggest, designed to satisfy some ultimate desire with worship.
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On Loss of Land and Loss of Girlhood: Taneum Bambrick’s Vantage
Girlhood remains, like the land, a constant site of male fascination, desire, and violence.
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The Joy of Play: Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces (10th Anniversary Ed.) by David Biespiel
Biespiel offers a number of best practices—not just for writing poems, but for living a creative life.
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Intimate and Vast: Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
This is stunning work—painful, embodied, and glorious.
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The Fraught Nature of Belonging: Nathalie Handal’s Life in a Country Album
Each poem opens a window into cities and vocabularies of exile.
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Calling It Like It Is: Leland Cheuk’s No Good Very Bad Asian
No Good Very Bad Asian is a letter to the future, to a reality that has begun taking shape in Maryann but has yet to be fully realized.