How I Learned to Hope Again
And in order to hope, I have to once more believe—in the midst of unrelenting dark—that light exists even if I cannot see it.
...more
Posts Tagged: hope
Having a Female Orgasm During the Trump Administration
“I am wondering if politics affect your sex life.”
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Shara Lessley
Shara Lessley discusses her new collection, The Explosive Expert’s Wife, the task of humanizing those we might dismiss as monsters, and writing toward hope.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Sarah Blake
Sarah Blake discusses her new collection, Let’s Not Live on Earth, questions in poems, monsters, and the challenge of writing a dystopia.
...more
The Night Is Itself a Novel: Talking with Lidija Dimkovska
Lidija Dimkovska discusses A Spare Life, living through the break-up of Yugoslavia, her writing style, and where she now feels most at home.
...more
Rumpus Original Fiction: Prescriptions
I wore sobriety like a shirt that was too tight in the shoulders, and everyone around me knew it.
...moreAlbum of the Week: Revelations by Shamir
“It’s not really that calculated anymore. I’m bearing my soul in these songs, and just giving it how it is.”
...more
The Storming Bohemian #34: Descent into the Underworld
The last time I punked the muse, I wrote of the summer solstice, a meditation into the heart of the sun. My goal was to leave behind the ever-more-depressing news cycle, and touch some place deep down where hope resides. We live in the Sun, I concluded. I envisioned a home where we could all […]
...more
Voices on Addiction: Shame Is a Treble Hook
Shame is a treble hook that tells me that 1) I not only fail but am a failure, that 2) I not only damage people but I am damaged, and that 3) I not only lie but I am a lie.
...more
Storytelling Is a Search: An Interview with Sequoia Nagamatsu
Sequoia Nagamatsu discusses his debut collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, grief as a character, and the intersection of ancient myth and the modern world.
...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
Why Is It Always up to the Women?
That’s the real tangle of women’s labor; it’s too deeply ingrained to the way our lives work for us to properly strike from it.
...more
The Future of Body Horror: Can Our Art Keep up with Our Suffering?
The individuality of body horror is its signature attribute. Nothing is more intimate than one’s own body, and by extension, one’s own physical suffering.
...more
Readers Report: The Emperor’s New Clothes
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
...more
R.I.P.: Inauguration Day
Instead of mourning in solitude, let us sob together. Let us soak communally in our fear. Let us hyperventilate, our breasts heaving in unison.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Shane McCrae
I think that the moment we’re living in offers the best opportunity we’ve had in a long time in that a lot of things having to do with identity politics are being talked about in poems.
...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #10: Art Lives!
Sunday: I work through the voting guide, propositions, and candidates, making my decisions. My partner, Argyle C, Klopnick (ACK!), is sure, now, that Hillary’s victory is certain. I ‘m not yet a believer. I think Trump is electable. Monday: I’m catching the excitement. My female cousins and my sisters post pictures of themselves in white […]
...more
Reimagining America
I’m a performer, and in hard times, this job gets harder. I make music when the nation mourns, and my music can sound like hope.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Ben Ehrenreich
Ben Ehrenreich, author of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine, discusses oppression, objectivity in journalism, and millennial politics.
...more
Voices on Addiction: Too Much Hope
I wanted more time with him, but I didn’t want to hope. Too much hope will mess you up.
...moreHope Floats
For The New Inquiry, Autumn Whitefield-Madrano does a close read of hope—what it is, what it isn’t, and the furtive, metered ways that women and cosmetics companies partake in it: I long to see a greater embrace of hope. Not necessarily the creams and potions and, yes, the jars; those are incidental to the essence of […]
...moreFrank Ocean’s Plea for Beauty after Orlando
Frank Ocean has released a message about the Orlando shooting that is mournfully beautiful in both its reflection on the hate that fueled the attacks and the hope for a counter-balancing beauty to emerge in its wake: I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor […]
...moreA Toast to a Better Life
Now, if you’re thinking, “a toaster is not a good enough reason to continuing living such a futile existence,” then you’ve never experienced the way a piece of golden brown, bread, gently rising from an evenly-heated, cooking chamber, can lift one’s battered spirits from even the darkest pits of despair. Turns out toasters are a […]
...more
The Last Book I Loved: Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living In New York
But when my loneliness feels as vast—and capable of drowning me—as the sea, this book about self-destruction comforts me more than any self-help.
...moreThe Axis of Empathy
Much has been written recently about Pakistan, most of it having to do with George W. Bush’s War on Terror. Where exactly is bin Laden hiding? Is the Pakistani government doing enough to help find him? And what of A.Q. Khan? What does the Pakistani nuclear scientist’s release from house arrest tell us about the […]
...more