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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Join NOW!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.
...moreAt Catapult, Rachel Vorona Cote takes readers down a path of struggle that far too many writers walk, but aren’t always able to talk about or understand. In “Black Books and Letting the Ink Dry,” Vorona Cote looks at the “paradox of the blank book”: The paradox of the blank book is this: It invites our most intimate scribbles […]
...moreI’m constantly making up stories, and writing histories, even when I’m not putting them into songs.
...moreIt never occurred to me to try to write poems without the guidance of other poets and poems.
...moreUnderwriting the words on that page are the counterposing sentiments I see in many writers I know, especially writers of color: At one pole there’s, I just want to be okay; I want my family/community to be okay. At the other pole there’s, If I only reach the mountaintop I’ll be respected, valid, wealthy, etc. […]
...moreIn the first installment of Wanted/Needed/Loved, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof talks about the items he can’t live (or tour) without.
...moreDaniel Alarcón interviews Alejandro Zambra for BOMB Magazine; among other things, they touch on William Carlos Williams, Chile, bonsai trees, dictators, and beautiful notebooks.
...moreWe think of our brains as a place. We surround thoughts with metaphors of environment.
...morePraise the writer’s notebook, and praise the evolution of the writer’s notebook. Over at the New Yorker, Casey Cep writes about archiving the daily details digitally in photographs, rather than on paper: Photography engenders a new kind of ekphrasis, especially when the writer herself is the photographer. That is why I have found myself so willing to […]
...moreWithin the crowd is a bald-headed, bearded man. He carries a sketchpad that, if he were sitting cross-legged, would be big enough to cover his knees. He is not a reporter. “The funeral is over, but the corpse is still grooving,” he writes. The man is Shel Silverstein.
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