Rumpus Reviews
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Another Oracle: Lynn Xu’s Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Light
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,…
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The Claws That Type the Text: Ander Monson’s Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession
Rather than saying, Fuck it, and remaining stagnant in the face of cultural horrors, Monson suggests readers start with the marginalia. Exhaust all possibilities. Carve a new path where sweeping prescriptions fail to stick.
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SKETCH BOOK REVIEWS: Three Faves
A roundup of great books that didn’t make it into Sketch Book Reviews this year
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A World Where We Are Known and Loved: Shelley Wong’s As She Appears
to be seen is not the same thing as being known
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Revising Time: Nonlinear Memory in Brian Tierney’s Rise and Float
I’m getting too close to the poems, but Tierney’s collection demands a closeness.
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The Verdant Heart of a Mythic Neighborhood: Cleyvis Natera’s Neruda on the Park
In Natera’s masterful debut novel, a simple New York City park becomes the verdant heart of a mythic neighborhood, where fire escapes are like golden staircases and the community goodwill of friends and neighbors becomes a nurturing flame that sustains…
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History Is Fluid: R.F. Kuang’s Babel
In Babel, language is a resource stolen from the mouths of native speakers.
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Daydreams of Blackness: Some of Them Will Carry Me by Giada Scodellaro
Scodellaro’s characters have autonomy, know their comforts and desires, and find space and safety in the corners of forgotten places. They grieve on countertops, chewing ice and waiting for the return of a lover who has left for another.
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Far from Usual and Better for It: The Layered Poetics of Allison Blevins’s Slowly/Suddenly
Slowly/Suddenly is presented as a diptych in the Table of Contents, perhaps mirroring Blevins’s commitments to other forms of art, but her poems’ progression from Part I to Part II is not a linear narrative, not a Before & After.
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How the World Happens to Us: Lucy Ives’ Life Is Everywhere
Lucy Ives has proven herself to be one of our greatest under-the-radar geniuses, but an achievement like Life Is Everywhere demands attention. The systems have long been in place, but everyone will see them now.
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Escaping the Infinite: An Omnibus Review of Four Contemporary Works of Poetry
So everything should be very clear.
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Love in and Loving Lisa Dordal’s Water Lessons
If I didn’t already write poems, Lisa Dordal’s Water Lessons would make me want to write them.