poetry
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Monkey Bars
The result of Lippman’s perpetual contentiousness is a collection that is confrontational in the best sense of the word, interrogating the reader, himself, and America pretty much as a whole about child-rearing, over-medication, racism, consumerism and whatever else you’ve got.
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I Know My Brother In the Mirror
Michael Klein’s then, we were still living is a thoughtful, emotional book that treats death in a fresh, even endearing way.
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The Dangers Of Making Art
“To be dangerous is to remind the world of what our humanity means to us, rather than allowing everyone to settle into complacency. To challenge us to dig deeper into reflecting on our lives, instead of just accepting what we’re…
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The Rumpus Interview with Gerald Stern
There’s a black and white photo in which the poet Stanley Kunitz lovingly holds Gerald Stern’s cheeks in both hands. It’s 1990. They’re looking into one another, and Kunitz says, “You’re the wilderness in American poetry.”
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Things That Work Are Muffled and Mute
Through rigorous consideration, with patient generosity, Valerio Magrelli’s poetry allows all his subjects—broken machines, utterances, each of us—to be our own streets, and in such a transfixing world, a circle closes around Kant: things can be both means to an…
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Soften the Razor’s Edge, the Reign of Terror
Many poems, and many more lines, couplets and quatrains in Opal Sunset are superb, making their lesser companions wan imitations of what Clive James can really do when his interior editor and his varied gifts unite.
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10 Mississippi
This book is seductive because, page by page, poem by poem, 10 Mississippi is cyclic and aswirl, is… as flowing and eddying as the river of the title.
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A Dialogue at the Core of Her Being
Ai successfully blends personal autobiographical poems with her trademark dramatic monologues, making for a truly original text—a kind of personified hybridity—that is both haunting and humorous.
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Black Hole Sun
Ultimately, though, it’s the cadence of the voice that engages the reader. Slant rhyme, and skillfully enjambed couplets and tercets, are the real shakers.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club with Timothy Donnelly
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club talks with Timothy Donnelly about his poetry collection, The Cloud Corporation.
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Pastries, Cowboy Music / That Kind of Shit
Reading, and re-reading these poems, you’ll find lines which are so outrageous, hilarious, and true that they get lodged in your head, like songs; and, you’ll find yourself quoting the poems to others, because they seem so apt in their…
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Maggot
Watching Paul Muldoon’s sentences course across the forms he has set for himself is like watching an elite athlete being put through his paces.