poetry
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Decades of Nothing Between
These poems are often about the strange, complex and imperfect mapping of nature—human and wild—onto our 21st century lives.
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My Fruit Bat, My Gewgaw
These poems are about unintentional association, the ways our minds wander even when — especially when? — they’re trying to wrap themselves around a given idea.
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“Thousands are gathered outside the interior ministry…” a Rumpus Original Poem by Dora Malech
“Thousands are gathered outside the interior ministry…” Bloody lullabies soothe the centuries. Can’t see the cradles for the tops of trees but you know the rest: you can’t rest, poor babies.
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My Affairs Are Just My Questions
And it is a voice—perhaps a bit apprehensive and damaged by experience—that seems willing to express it all, even the ugly and cruel.
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“Scissor Half,” a Rumpus Original Poem by Jacqueline Waters
You were telling me your dream / at some point you started / just making it up
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Poem Forest
“Urban planners, artists, and citizens around the world must open poetic space within increasingly cramped, increasingly bottom-line-driven cities. Our political animalness gets claustrophobic. We require the commons to encounter each other and the physical landscape.” Poem Forest involved participants reciting…
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“Newspoet” Kick-off
NPR’s All Things Considered is starting a monthly project that brings poets into the newsroom before unleashing them to write a poem “reflecting on the day’s news.” Their inaugural poet is Rumpus Poetry Book Club author Tracy K. Smith. You…
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You Simply Die of Want
The poems are themselves stealthy, hiding but then eventually revealing themselves to the writers. Or the stealth writers, both Seaton and Ace autonomous and authentic somewhere in that collaborative voice.
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Denied the Work of Natural Generation
Haunted by the paradoxes associated with Shakerism that both glorified and doomed it, Kirchwey uses the place of Mount Lebanon to explore a layering of spaces and themes that accesses vast time and situation.
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A Busted Advent Calendar
The Weary World Rejoices has its unadorned moments of grief, punctuated by moments of energetic wit and intelligent levity.