journals Archives - The Rumpus

The Present in Its Most Vivid Colors: A Conversation with Ben Shattuck

What does a growth of new grass on a hillside in spring make you feel? Is it a mixture of nostalgia and hope? Or what does a distant mountain range wreathed in a crown of clouds make you feel?

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Rumpus Original

Fields of Light

Light reflects differently off near and faraway objects. It’s all about the light.

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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #133: Jake Shears

“I wrote this book. I worked really, really hard on it, and I was a little scared by it.”

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No Pressure: Bieber, Blackness, the Cult of Perfection

Bieber is like a prism that reflects back whatever you want to see.

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The Rumpus Interview with Stacy Szymaszek

Poet Stacy Szymaszek discusses her most recent collection, Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals, the "notebook genre," and claiming a city—ugly sites and all.

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Other

February 25th, 1956

… met, by the way, a brilliant ex-Cambridge poet at the wild St. Botolph’s Review party last week; will probably never see him again… but wrote my best poem about…

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Other

Do Reading Fees Exploit Writers?

In recent years, many reputable publications have taken to charging reading fees and earlier this year, Nick Mamatas set off an Internet kerfuffle over The Offing‘s reading fee policies. The ethical…

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Other

Sylvia Plath’s First Tragedy

I don’t know whether it is a hereditary characteristic, but our little family is altogether too prone to lie awake at nights hating ourselves for stupidities—technical or verbal or whatever—and…

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Other

Writing the Story of Your Life

Keeping a diary requires strong commitment and great honesty, and Zadie Smith has struggled with the idea of journaling all through her life, as she writes in her latest essay, “Life Writing,” over at Rookie.

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Other

Almost On The Road

The New Yorker has unlocked a selection of Jack Kerouac’s journals that ran in the magazine back in 1998. Beginning with his near-completion of Town and City, and ending days…

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Rumpus Original

Exploring the Redwood Forest: Journals and the Private Self

Lately, over crumb-laden dinner tables and cups of coffee and on windy hillsides I ask friends, family, and peripheral acquaintances whether or not they write in a journal.

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