Donut Dollies and Maven Matriarchs: A Conversation with Luis Alberto Urrea
If you’ve got that outline already lived, then you have to try to honor it.
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Janet Rodriguez
22 posts
The Poem is Second, Living is First: An Interview with Tim Z. Hernandez
Above everything else, people come first.
I Freed Myself from Needing to Make Sense: A Conversation with Leila Chatti
I’ve learned by now my mind is smarter than I am, than my conscious self—it’s doing all sorts of things in there, unbeknownst to me. I often tell my students that the poem knows better than I do, and so I shouldn’t be arrogant enough to think I’m in control.
Strength and Feeling in Motion: A conversation with Henri Cole about Gravity and Center
Horses are a nice metaphor for the sonnet’s strength and feeling in motion. Beauty and violent power come together in an animal form. When I write, I have the feeling of being a rider. As the poem gallops forward, I am knocked about.
When Craft Becomes an Act of Love: An Interview with Gayle Brandeis
I want to be fully present for whatever I'm doing, whether it's teaching, or writing, or being with people I love.
Telling our necessary truths: A Conversation with Janet Rodriguez
Only after this memoir was I able to see the Kafka truth: We are telling our necessary truths. We are the necessary heroes of our own narratives. Somewhere inside all of it, there is a collective truth, one we can safely tell.
Knowledge alters things forever: A conversation with Anuradha Roy
. . . it was clear in my head that the dog in the book would not die, that he would bring people together, and also function as a kind of barometer for good and evil because, in my experience, that is how dogs are.
Bringing the Exterior into our Private Rooms: A Conversation with Victoria Chang
There’s no reason for cruelty; the joy is in the writing. I always try to remember why I started doing this thing: Because I had to. It’s not a choice for many of us writers to write, but we do have a choice about whether we’re going to be nice or not.
Hope is the Best Strategy: A Conversation with Sharman Apt Russell
As we start seeing the effects of climate change, of people struggling with drought and struggling with erratic weather patterns and flooding, we have to accept our responsibility.
Ancient Voices, Language, Cats: Talking with Kaveh Akbar about Pilgrim Bell
To reduce a poem to a purely autobiographical, experiential reading feels limiting to me. To reduce a poem to an “aboutness” seems limiting to me. The poet Allen Grossman said, “A poem is about a thing the way a cat is about a house.”
The Rumpus Mini Interview Project: Carribean Fragoza
“I always try to locate stories deep inside myself, physically and emotionally.”
The Burden of Translation: Talking with Leonora Simonovis
Leonora Simonovis discusses her debut collection, STUDY OF THE RAFT.