poetry
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National Poetry Month: From Of Pearl (a manuscript-in-progress)
Author’s Note: I am currently in the early stages of writing a book-length poem, Of Pearl. The book will take the form of several monologues, which intersect visually on the page and, at times, interact. One of the central voices…
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National Poetry Month: birdBlack
when the sky rained blood i stood at attention. i looked the horizon in its long goat eye. i said there was a time before the air.
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National Poetry Month: Two Poems
The okra, right now, all heart, is putting on its flowers underneath her voice, which, I swear, makes the trees stop growing for however many seconds she decides to talk about how the phone lines used to be connected, and…
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National Poetry Month: Loud Lord
The future an accordion of paper dolls, countless wraps made with the same variety of deli meats. Meat dolls,paper dolls. Who is the accountant of these meals, these paltry wishes exchanged over hoppy small batch beers secretly owned by global…
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Poems by Shira Erlichman
First Week in Her Bed 1The miracle was that no one was home. I could let the sounds out. The sounds entered through her neck & came out of my mouth. My thighs adagioed. I went 2everywhere she took me. The silence…
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Rumpus Original Poetry: Megan Pinto
The Doe Because of the rain, the meadowis empty. How quickly the trainvanishes this view. I press my ear to blank paper, hopingto hear you, waiting for a break in the rain. My mother counseled me to pray MaryMother of…
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The Poem as an Archive of Your Life and the World Around You: The Rumpus Interview with Clint Smith
. . . intellectual rigor or artistic integrity don’t have to come at the expense of legibility . . .
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Broadening the Scope of the Environmental Canon: An Interview with Camille T. Dungy
Some books defy categories. Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) by poet Camille T. Dungy pushes the limits of what readers might expect from any genre. Is it memoir or environmental literature?The book covers…
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I Freed Myself from Needing to Make Sense: A Conversation with Leila Chatti
I’ve learned by now my mind is smarter than I am, than my conscious self—it’s doing all sorts of things in there, unbeknownst to me. I often tell my students that the poem knows better than I do, and so…


