poetry
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“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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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“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…
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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…