The Last Poem I Loved: “The Hell Poem” by Shane McCrae
I’m fascinated that the speaker’s harm disappearing is a function of being in Hell.
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Join NOW!I’m fascinated that the speaker’s harm disappearing is a function of being in Hell.
...moreDinty W. Moore discusses his new essay collection, TO HELL WITH IT.
...moreIf you’re going to Hell, bring a good guide.
...moreThe psyche is haunted by its own swollen intimacies, Merwin’s poems remind us.
...moreQueer literature isn’t a box to unlock so that it can unlock me.
...moreWe never want something more than when it has been taken away from us. The opposite of freedom is confinement.
...moreSociety is falling apart, the daily news seems to say. Living in interesting times, it is all too easy to fear that our work is meaningless.
...moreI set off for Rome with my fiddle and a backpack, planning to busk as long as the tourists could stand it.
...moreThe Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Phillip B. Williams about his new book Thief in the Interior, form in poetry, and balancing editing work with one’s own.
...moreLook at the star, your star, in my hands. It bears your name. I was told it does not have much longer to live. I hope you do not mind my untrimmed nails.
...moreThis year marks Dante’s 750th birthday. But on what date should The Rumpus host our purgatorio-themed party? More importantly, what was Dante’s zodiac sign? If you’re a fastidious reader of The Divine Comedy and your horoscope, you should know the answer without a date: Dante’s journey to the Underworld is a classic Gemini move. More […]
...moreAll of Italy, it seems, is gearing up for a serious, extended celebration in honor of the 750th birthday of the beloved poet Dante Alighieri. John Kleiner writes for the New Yorker about the festivities and the country’s intense relationship with Dante, and attempts to put it all in context for an American audience: The […]
...moreThe Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Kathleen Ossip about her new book, The Do Over, Catholic school, the afterlife, poem-like things, and how form sets sorely-needed limits.
...moreDean Rader talks with Edward Hirsch about his new book Gabriel, the pain of losing a child, and the challenges of writing grief.
...morePoet and essayist Christian Wiman discusses landscape, elegy, and the strain between doubt and belief.
...moreJames Wolcott’s review of Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick summed up in one piece of advice: skip the first third of the book. Unlike Hemingway, Plath, Wolfe, et al., Updike refuses to put the pen down, and now “younger novelists have voiced disgruntlement with the solipsism and literary penis-wagging of Updike’s generation of privileged males.” […]
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