The Perfect Childhood
Even when these questions are not articulated, they’re there.
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Posts Tagged: children
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Peter Mishler
Peter Mishler discusses his debut collection, Fludde, the effect of ritual on poems, and childhood psychology.
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Strawberry Field
To pick a strawberry, one must crouch.
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On Birds, Cats, and Children
My devotion to the cats was not an imitation of human motherhood. To confuse the two, I thought, was an insult to both.
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It’s Just Reality: Talking with Meaghan O’Connell
Meaghan O’Connell discusses her new memoir, And Now We Have Everything, perfectionism in motherhood and writing, and being pregnant again.
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The Last Poem I Loved : “The Planned Child” by Sharon Olds
The poem is no longer a part of the book I own. I ripped it out, had it framed, and nailed it to the wall right next to the door in our master bedroom.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #126: Christopher Zeischegg
“Being thrust into forced ritualistic closeness does break the ice, but doesn’t guarantee closeness.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: One of Them Dies
We seldom forget when people promise to give us something, whether we need or want that thing or not. I promise you death, you want a death.
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After the Telling
We want to protect our children from everything, even sometimes ourselves.
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The Miracle Bowl
Praise the family that tethers me. Praise the well-used kitchen utensils and scoured mixing bowls and butter knives, thick slabs of jelly on the bread.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: City of Foundlings
What makes him think she’s in any less pain? Because hers isn’t prolonged by uncertainly, isn’t moored by hope.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Prescriptions
I wore sobriety like a shirt that was too tight in the shoulders, and everyone around me knew it.
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Endless Preparation: Apples and Women’s Work
It makes sense to me that Johnny Appleseed, a man, would travel God’s earth spreading his profligate seed. And then women are doomed to their lives trying to make that seed into something useful.
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A Hinging Thing: Talking with Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith discusses her new collection Good Bones, how motherhood has changed her writing, and what it felt like to have a poem go viral.
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Everyone Loves the Pope
My lover became the Pope. It was the twenty-tens and the Catholic Church wanted to rebrand with Newport cigarettes and Hermes chiseled calves.
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A Magpie for the Lord
What would it be like to not be us? We were trying to figure out so much about the world then, and this is something we could never get to the bottom of.
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It’s Never Too Late to Be Found: A Conversation with Rene Denfeld
Rene Denfeld discusses her latest book, The Child Finder, the ways in which trauma traps us, and the important role of imagination in finding resilience and escape.
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Finding the Finally: Alice Anderson Discusses Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away
Alice Anderson on her memoir, Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away, drag, and motherhood.
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Death, Memory, and Other Superpowers
There was no cedar chest filled with tissue-wrapped rattles, handprint art projects, and bronzed baby shoes. Our parents never spoke of our missing sister.
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The Gate of Permission: A Conversation with Victoria Redel
Victoria Redel discusses her newest novel, Before Everything, living through and beyond grief, and why she loves secrets.
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The Aura of Baby Einstein, the Child, the Toy
If there is no distinction between show and commercial, ethics and entertainment, what kind of distinctions, if any, exists between her imaginary play, her consumer life, and our reality?
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Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Jessica Berger Gross
Jessica Berger Gross discusses her new memoir, Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home, walking away from her parents age of twenty-eight, and the importance of boundaries.
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On the Front Lines
When you pick up a pen instead of a rifle, you’re fighting an entirely different battle. This is my duty. This is my patriotism.
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Reading Colum McCann to My Daughter
I think we need to listen closer for the stories that shake us up the most … and then share them and talk about them with the people we love. And the people we don’t.
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The Day the FBI Tapped Our Phones
I held an image in my mind of my daughter and me in a small rowboat and I’m rowing, rowing, rowing as hard as I can, away from this sinking ship.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Savage Mind, Pt. 1
The violence came in and we were not just in danger of being victims of it. We were in danger of being violent ourselves.
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The Rumpus Interview with Bonnie Jo Campbell
Bonnie Jo Campbell discusses her collection Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, the natural world as a character, and finding writing from the male point of view easier.
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Safety Nets: On Seeing Movies with My Children
There’s no blueprint for any of this. If there were, I would have read it by now.
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