poetry
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Why I Chose Cleopatra Mathis’s “Book of Dog” for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
Camille T. Dungy on why she selected Book of Dog by Cleopatra Mathis for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club in November.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Searching for Sylvia Plath
Here’s a lede that might send you to your room with the vapors: “As a rule the work of women poets is marked by intensity of feeling and fineness of perception rather than by outstanding technical accomplishment.” So writes Bernard…
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Crossing State Lines: An American Renga edited by Bob Homan and Carol Muske-Dukes
I first discovered Renga: A Chain of Poems (Brazillier, 1972) in a used bookstore in New York during my first year of graduate school. I was transfixed.
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Donald Hall Says “Thank You” Twice
Donald Hall offers The New Yorker a series of reminiscences, observations and gentle declarations concerning the poetry reading, a beast he has come to know most intimately during his lifetime, both from the audience and the stage. “Sound had always…
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“The Tornado Collects the Animals”: a Rumpus Original Poem by Catherine Pierce
The Tornado Collects the Animals The tornado likes animals because they pay attention. The tornado sees the dogs howling up from rippling yards, the cows huddled mutely against one another, a sparrow pulsing its wings hard to stay stationary. The…
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“The Girls of Peculiar” by Catherine Pierce
There is a canon of cinema that revolves around girls leaving girlhood, and finding themselves young and nubile, ready (so they think) to embrace their future as women. There’s the girl who seduces her teacher, only to realize she should…
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McSweeney’s Launches Poetry Series
McSweeney’s brand-new poetry series begins tomorrow evening in San Francisco. The inaugural reading will feature writers Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts (a Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection), Rebecca Lindenberg, author of Love: An Index, and Zubair Ahmed, author of the forthcoming City of Rivers. Friday, October…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Why I’m Quitting Ezra Pound
Ever heard that gobsmacking troubadourist Ezra Pound read his elaborate, funkified sestina, “Sestina: Altafore,” in a voice that is one part American-as-European, swilling-with-the-rolling-R’s accent and cantorian swoons and another part a sort of goofy Hailey, Idaho carnival barker? The nifty…
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“Southern Wind, Clear Sky”: A Rumpus Original Poem by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney
Southern Wind, Clear Sky Hokusai says the morning is clear, but it’s never really clear around Mount FujiMount Fuji is an active volcano, so we can never get entirely comfortable People have their theories, but nobody knows for sure what…
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“Robinson Alone” by Kathleen Rooney
First things first: you don’t have to be a fan of Weldon Kees to enjoy this book. Shameful confession: until I read the note that precedes the table of contents, I’d never even heard of Weldon Kees or his Robinson…
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“Transmittency”: A Rumpus Original Poem by Rachel Loden
Transmittency I stand by what I said. I stand by it or next to it. I peer over the gazebo at what I said, the way it flowers in the darkness, mysteriously,
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Selected Translations by W. S. Merwin
The translation of poetry requires justification. Not necessarily for conceptual reasons, but because the experience of reading translated poetry however transcendent and beautiful always feels lacking, incomplete, like living in a body missing some essential organ. Of course, this remains…