The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #203: Molly Spencer
“I would say the primary role of speech in these poems is to attempt something. To try.”
...more
Posts Tagged: Emily Dickinson
Turning and Turning: Jericho Brown’s The Tradition
[T]his is a book in direct conversation with literary tradition.
...more
More Than Ordinary: If the House by Molly Spencer
Attention—where it is, where it is not—pervades If the House.
...more
Poetry Is Wild: Talking with Ariel Francisco
Ariel Francisco discusses his forthcoming second collection, A SINKING SHIP IS STILL A SHIP.
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #95: Omnidirectional
If you love this album as much as I think you’re going to, make sure to tell a friend.
...more
Story by Story: Talking with Margaret Renkl
Margaret Renkl discusses her forthcoming debut memoir-in-essays, LATE MIGRATIONS.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky discusses his new collection, DEAF REPUBLIC.
...more
Beyond the Elegant Veneer: Talking with Greer Macallister
Greer Macallister discusses her new novel, WOMAN 99.
...more
Violence and Tenderness: The Explosive Expert’s Wife by Shara Lessley
Lessley’s poems remind us: “Because to cry’s / a sign, to cry is proof, / there’s life.”
...more
A Legacy of Wisdom: The Final Voicemails by Max Ritvo
Is death a miracle or destruction?
...more
Poet-Cosmologist: A Conversation with Bruce Beasley
“The cusp of errand and awe is where poetry always is for me.”
...more
ENOUGH: Once You’re Trapped, You Lose the Game
A Rumpus series of work by women and non-binary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
...more
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.
...more
Faith and Identity: Fireworks in the Graveyard by Joy Ladin
To “ameliorate” the desire for death or the sense of self-annihilation, Ladin finds in religion a way of reconciliation, not only within herself, but also with her community and society at large.
...more
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.”
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Terese Mailhot
Terese Mailhot discusses her debut memoir, Heart Berries, writing candidly about one’s personal life, and the good that can come from anger.
...more
Saudade Manifest: Biography, Myth-Making, and Haunted Houses in the Amazon
A myth is its own kind of truth.
...more
On Joy: Three Poetry Anthologies
With impermanence and “praise for the devil” all around, it’s a gift to rediscover joy, no matter how fleeting.
...more
It’s All Metaphorical: A Conversation with Laurette Folk
Laurette Folk discusses her new collection, Totem Beasts, the role of meditation and dreams in her work, and “seeking some heightened experience in the conscious world.”
...more
What to Read When You Want to Feel Thankful
Kick off the holiday season with a list of books that Rumpus editors are thankful for!
...more
On Speaking Plainly: A Conversation with Rajith Savanadasa
Rajith Savanadasa discusses his debut novel, Ruins, writing across oceans, and the chance encounter with refugees that led to the story at the heart of his novel.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #85: Elizabeth Metzger
I have known the poet Elizabeth Metzger since kindergarten—and ever since I have known her, she has been a poet. When we played the The Game of Life, a board game, she wrote small lyrics about the futures we ended the game with; when I had a crush, she wrote light verse about the boys […]
...more
We Have Met the Maelstrom, and It Is Us: Dean Rader’s Self-Portrait as a Wikipedia Entry
Umbrellas are flimsy shelters from the maelstrom, and Rader keeps going because he can’t stop.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Pandora and the Naked Dead Woman
Bite that apple, open that jar at your own risk and see how your garden grows, how hopeful you remain. Paradise is, after all, blissful self-ignorance.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 9): “The City Limits”
[A] nation’s poetry degenerates if it does not embody the language of what is mysterious…
...more
My Voice for Their Drugs
Anxiety disorients me from inside. My heart moves so erratically I’m afraid it will give out, my breath so staggered I have to remind myself to take in air.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Jaimee Wriston Colbert
Life’s inequities can be cruel, but in the end we are all part of our communities; suffering though we may be, we are not alone.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Jericho Parms
What is lost still has substance, is malleable, can take on new impressions, and be molded again to our experience, often resulting in the most lasting force that determines how we see the world.
...moreA Death Blow Can Be a Life Blow to Some
What does it mean to be carried away? To be captured, carried off, liberated? To lose control of oneself? Lerner doesn’t show concern for questions like these. More generally, The Hatred of Poetry takes little interest in the rarities of technique across a poet’s body of work and avoids questions about his or her sense […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Connie Wanek
Connie Wanek discusses her latest book, Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems, the challenge of looking back at older poems, and what prioritizing writing looks like.
...more