Subtext Rising to the Surface: A Conversation with Matthew Olzmann
Poet Matthew Olzmann discusses his work with Julie Marie Wade.
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Posts Tagged: Elizabeth Bishop
Intimate and Vast: Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
This is stunning work—painful, embodied, and glorious.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers discusses her new collection, THE TILT TORN AWAY FROM THE SEASONS.
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Great Pain, Great Pleasure: Here All Night, Nightshade, and Blazons
All three remind readers that what is imagined is not always real and the world is not as expected.
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A Female, Bone-Deep Obsession: Talking with Jennifer Martelli
Jennifer Martelli discusses her new collection of poetry, MY TARANTELLA.
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Notable San Francisco: 10/3–10/9
Literary events in and around the Bay Area this week!
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Katie Ford
Katie Ford discusses her new collection, IF YOU HAVE TO GO.
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Hidden Just Beyond View: Jenny George’s The Dream of Reason
George interrupts us, clears her throat, makes us listen.
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Poet-Cosmologist: A Conversation with Bruce Beasley
“The cusp of errand and awe is where poetry always is for me.”
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We’re All Unreliable Narrators: Talking with R.O. Kwon
R.O. Kwon discusses her debut novel, THE INCENDIARIES.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #131: Lisa Wells
“I always feel like I’m starting over. I don’t know how I ever wrote a poem. I really do have that feeling.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #127: Tara Skurtu
“A poem is not a perfect puzzle, yet it is precisely a perfect puzzle.”
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The House of Fiction Has Many Rooms: Talking with Sigrid Nunez
Sigrid Nunez discusses her seventh novel, The Friend, her fondness for writing about animals, and the ways the literary world has changed.
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Visitations: Gwendolyn Brooks at One Hundred
A visitation is how I describe the past weeks walking with Gwendolyn Books. It is like she is just around every corner.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Iris Dunkle
Iris Jamahl Dunkle on her new collection Interrupted Geographies, writing against the pastoral tradition, the power of persona poems, and the town of Pithole.
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Saying What Shouldn’t Be Said: A Conversation with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, why writing about teenage girls is the most serious thing in the world, and finding truths in fiction.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, the writers and books that influenced it, tackling addiction with compassion, and the magic of teenage girls.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lucy Jane Bledsoe
Lucy Jane Bledsoe discusses her latest book, A Thin Bright Line, uncovering the remarkable story of her aunt, and illuminating history through the lens of imagination.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jennifer Martelli
Jennifer Martelli discusses her debut collection of poetry, The Uncanny Valley, growing up saturated with images of the Madonna, and her experience of motherhood first as a daughter and now as a mother.
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“Housefulls, Churchfulls, Airportsfull”
In an extended essay in the New Yorker, Megan Marshall, author of the forthcoming Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, writes about Bishop’s late, serendipitous move to Harvard where she met Alice Methfessel, a young “house secretary” who would become her caretaker, and the last great love of her life: “The poor heart doesn’t seem to […]
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 4): “Roosters”
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare // with stupid eyes / while from their beaks there rise / the uncontrolled, traditional cries.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Janice N. Harrington
Janice N. Harrington on her new collection Primitive and critiquing the use of “primitive” to describe African American folk art.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #74: A Social Practice
Everywhere there is sterling musicianship, of the original, unexpected sort.
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The Rumpus Interview with Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath talks about his new collection, XX: Poems For The Twentieth Century, capitalism, history, and what it might mean to write a wordless poem.
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The Rumpus Interview with Robyn Schiff
Robyn Schiff talks about her collection A Woman of Property, the long con of “owning” land, her passion for early novels, how motherhood changed her poetry, and the generative powers of form.
...moreSelf-in-Landscape Art
It’s Women’s History Month at the Poetry Foundation. The editors peg Elizabeth Bishop’s poems—in volumes with titles like North & South, Questions of Travel, Geography III—to her wide-ranging geography, and to her illustrious cohort.
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The Rumpus Late Nite Poetry Show: Rick Barot
In Episode 13 of The Rumpus Late Nite Poetry Show, Rick Barot discusses his newest collection, Chord, tone in poetry, and the selfies Bishop might’ve posted.
...moreBuddies, Bishop and Gunn
Colm Toíbín, author of On Elizabeth Bishop, has a lovely long reflection at the Guardian about Bishop’s friendship with Thom Gunn, and the parallels in the artists’ life and work. Bishop and Gunn both shied away from writing about mentally ill mothers and queer relationships for most of their lives, although Gunn addressed both in the 1990s. […]
...moreA New Read on Bishop
For a poet as anthologized as Elizabeth Bishop, it’s fair to say there’s a certain lack of serious criticism—or perhaps, critics thinking seriously—about her work, compared to the Modernists against whose influence she was writing. Eavan Boland reviews a new volume by Colm Tóibín that aims to begin closing the gulf. On Elizabeth Bishop is […]
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