Become a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!
2. In literary Arabic, kaph is used as a prefix to mean like or as or as though / 3. If kaph is a hand that means like or as or as though, then kaph is a simile / 4. Simile is a hand touching two places at once, a hand bringing together / two far away things, making a transfer (metaphor)
...more
Almost ten years have passed since Lynn Xu’s debut, the luminous Debts & Lessons, introduced us to her oracle. “Let it not be for what you write, the world / I mean,” opens one of the collection’s signature center-justified poems, redeemed from any elitist snark about the form’s limitations. That collection’s first poem, “Say You […]
...more
. . . language is duplicitous. To be broken is perhaps to be part of a process (or a metaphor for life), where to bend (and survive) also leads to being broken. In this context, the word “broken” in “Reverse Engineer” might well point to a hard-won success.
...more
to be seen is not the same thing as being known
...more
Poetry for everyone
...more
sun bears are the smallest bear species / the 2nd smallest bear species is / not the moon bear although they are / relatively small when compared / to other bears such as polar bears
...more
So everything should be very clear.
...more
suddenly / we & our dream / of humanity are / all the rage / a star or what / passes / for one
...more
Fortinbras felt so good / the way he came after everyone was dead / with an army, and their complexes were dead / dead, dead, but still soft, the flush / just barely drained from of their cheeks,
...more
Unfortunately, I enjoy blasphemy. / My nightmares will kill me before God does. / What is a nightmare but what God does / to the trees, hiding paper in their pith?
...more
Casual amnesia Sunday I saw several people crying at the airport. One man on his phone begging the person on the other line to please stop calling and checking on him. I gathered that the mother of this man at the terminal had died. I was near the end of the chapter […]
...more
Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...more
Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...more
Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...more
Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...more
Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...more
The sky in Clearwater is the print / of your dress—all aster & blue starling. / The year ends the way it began. You asking me / for the indescribable. Sky has no notion of sky.
...more
Moons empty in the whisper / of space between us. / Mother’s ankles roll into / my calf, brimming with silver, / with sleep. The night is made / of photographs. We sleep over / the prayer rug, woven from / all the daughters that have / pressed their lips to it / and swallowed.
...more
Adrian Matejka discusses his new collection Map to the Stars, writing about poverty in contemporary poetry, and how racism maintains its place in our society.
...moreHarriet, aka the Poetry Foundation blog, has posted an excerpt of the Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s recent chat with T. R. Hummer. Watch as I learn what the Bald Man Fallacy is and more. Fortunately, they didn’t quote my alternate reading of the poem. I appreciate that.
...moreRumpus Poetry Book Club Advisory Board member Camille T. Dungy on why she chose Shane Book’s Ceiling of Sticks to be the group’s first selection. If anyone were to accuse contemporary American poetry of being insular, self-involved and provincial, these complaints would be silenced by Shane Book’s Ceiling of Sticks
...more