Sarah Simpson: The Last Book I Loved, The Subterraneans
Truman Capote famously said that what Jack Kerouac did wasn’t writing, but typing. I take just as much offense today to this slander as I did ten years ago as…
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Held Together By Sinews
Kinsella describes; he does not prescribe. He rests less comfortably in his retreat than Thoreau and without the surety that he lives an exemplary life.
“Publishing: Adapt or Die”
On the Media’s annual publishing industry episode covers a lot of ground with segments on this year’s Pulitzer fiction snub, e-books and changing reader behavior, fears of an Amazonian monopoly,…
A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon
I found this text to be profound, relentless, frustrating, inspiring, demanding, silly, pompous, elastic, and mind-expanding. That is what poetry is for, and this is for poetry.
The Rumpus Conversation Between Jon DeRosa and Karolina Waclawiak
Jon DeRosa is best known for leading the drone-pop collective Aarktica. Late last year DeRosa kicked off a new solo pop project with the release of the Anchored EP.
Shelves to Fill
Inspired by last year’s video by Melissa Jackson, librarian at Ballou Senior High School in Washington DC, Guys Lit Wire held two book fairs that helped Ballou move from having…
Unless You Land in Dhaka
Ahmed’s roots construct a more nuanced Americana, as we follow Ahmed through the industrial American cities where she calls herself citizen (read: “free”), to her always-estranged returns to Dhaka.
Rimas Uzgiris: The Last Book of Poetry I Loved, The Living Fire
I had read the book months ago. And then, standing in front of Edward Hopper’s “The House by the Railroad” at the Museum of Modern Art, I found myself trying…
Molly O’Brien: The Last Book I Loved, White Teeth
I was ten years old when 1999 became 2000. My knowledge of the Y2K problem was vague; I could only glean a nebulous mood of panic from overheard newscasts and…
I Have a Jaw That Seeks Chunks
In Melissa Broder’s second collection, Meat Heart, there is a burgeoning tension between the spiritual life of the imagination and its blood and guts container—the forehead, the hips, the heart—that…
The Body Place Is a Thinking Place
From these two new books, the reader can gather that it isn't just the day that is strong and can withstand change, but the same words can be applied to the speakers of these poems and to Myles herself.
The Last Book I Loved: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
Based on the true story of an English midland town in the year 1666 that quarantined itself to sweat out the bubonic plague, Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders: A Novel…