poetry
-
Getting to Know Thurston Moore, Poet
“It was Moore’s, and Moore’s alone, unique dichotomy of rock star demagogue and unbridled fan of poetry that made his class worth the audit. Scansion, simile, synecdoche―such elements of praxis are lost on Thurston Moore, as they would any experimental…
-
“I Growed No Potatoes To Write About, Sir”: a Rumpus Original Poem by Erin Belieu
I Growed No Potatoes To Write About, Sir nor bogs, nor fathers, nor special water that was my place alone to make me hard and wise— I did not sow nor bury, nor even try to fudge my nothings in…
-
“Baltics” by Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer’s Baltics, a long poem, first appeared in 1974, but this time around Samuel Charters has added a new afterword to his original translation, and his wife Ann Charters has included photographs from 1973 of Tranströmer and his wife at…
-
The Last Book I Loved: “Please” by Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown’s Please explores the way love and violence coexist with each other and how the two sometimes intertwine. The collection of poems is categorized by four sections: “Repeat,” “Pause,” “Power,” and finally, “Stop”; the first three sections address self-identification…
-
“The Apothecary’s Heir” by Julianne Buchsbaum
A winning selection in the 2011 National Poetry Series, Julianne Buchsbaum’s The Apothecary’s Heir interrogates the wildness of nature, the decadence of urban sprawl, and the necessity of myth and history in our daily lives. While her third collection maintains…
-
“As Long As Trees Last” by Hoa Nguyen
Seattle’s renowned independent press, Wave Books, recently published Hoa Nguyen’s third full-length collection of poems, As Long As Trees Last. In it, Nguyen once again dares to experiment with form, structure, and language to bring us a collection of genuinely…
-
“50 American Plays” by Matthew and Michael Dickman
I’ve visited exactly half of the states that make up our federal constitutional republic. I’m counting states that I’ve lived in, vacationed in, or merely driven through. Some of the states on my list are among the most beautiful places…
-
BOMBlog Interview with poet Dean Young
Described as covering “freely floating topics,” the BOMBlog interview with Dean Young disproves discontinuity within its first few moments: “Now is always unprecedented and sudden.” Young talks about his writing process in phrasing that’s as poetic and philosophical as the poems themselves. He also discusses…
-
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 9 Post-Election Political Poems You Must Read Before You Die
I’m writing this on Tuesday, November 6, Election Day. Full disclosure, today I will vote to reelect the president. As John F. Kennedy once said, “You can milk a cow the wrong way once and still be a farmer, but…
-
“Feather”: A Rumpus Original Poem by Deborah Ager
Feather Somehow, I thought you’d want to eat alone, A state you’d grown to master—brandy glass, A man behind your chair to fill your plate, A girl to bring you chocolate mousse, then candy. As another poet wrote: What do…
-
“What Is Amazing” by Heather Christle
What Is Amazing by Heather Christle is another illustration of my frustration with the word “critic,” why I think “appreciator” is a closer approximation and why I’m still open to one-word suggestions. Christle was born in 1980 and has two…
-
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.