Silence Is the Fertile Field: Talking with Fenton Johnson
Fenton Johnson discusses his new book, AT THE CENTER OF ALL BEAUTY.
...more
Posts Tagged: Thoreau
Teeth: An Oral History
Few people can tell that my smile is literally fake.
...more
Redefining Manhood: A Conversation with James Hornor
James Hornor discusses his new novel, VICTORIA FALLS.
...more
On Saviors and Superheroes: A Conversation with Adam Nemett
Adam Nemett discusses his debut novel, WE CAN SAVE US ALL.
...more
HORN! REVIEWS: Walden
While he doesn’t offer all the answers we want, he reminds us that we don’t see things as they are, which is key to anything.
...more
Corinne Lee and Finding an Antidote to America’s Toxicity
Poet Corinne Lee on writing her epic book-length poem Plenty and finding new ways to live in a rapidly changing world.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Jon Day
Jon Day discusses his memoir, Cyclogeography: Journeys of a London Bicycle Courier, the bicycle as a symbol of gentrification, and the city as “a technology for living.”
...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #4: Keep the Change
This week, your Storming Bohemian has moved to a new house. Again. And so some reflections: There is much to be said for stability, I know. The steady quiet observation of the likes of Annie Dillard or Henry Thoreau evokes my admiration. I am even an oblate of a Benedictine monastery. I know monks who […]
...moreMommy Dearest
We have an unfortunate tendency to let motherhood eclipse all aspects of a person’s identity—and then to turn around and call motherhood a faulty aspiration. Luckily there are moms like Antonia Malchik who write anyway, and implore us to remember moms like Elinore Pruitt Stewart, who ventured out onto the Wyoming frontier with her daughter: Why is work like […]
...more
Songs of Our Lives: Guns N’ Roses’s “Paradise City”
When people asked what I was going to do after high school, I said, “Leave town.” I wasn’t kidding. I hadn’t applied to a single college.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Pale of Vermont
But to become a writer I needed at least to learn about my own superstitions. I needed space in the house to sketch with words. I needed to commit heresies. And those acts had to feel pleasurable.
...more
The Last Poems I Loved: John Berryman’s Dream Songs #265 and #279
I have a tendency to read difficult books when my life is difficult.
...moreWord of the Day: Adoxography
(n.) skilled writing in praise of trivial or unpleasant subjects When people in a privileged society look deep within themselves to find what is missing, a streamlined clothes-cleaning experience comes up a lot. More often than not, the people who come up with lessening this burden on mankind are dudes, or duos of dudes, who […]
...moreCabin in the Woods
It may not be 1869 anymore, but fear not: the golden age of conservation literature is far from over. As part of the Pacific Standard‘s week-long series on “opting-out,” Eva Holland writes about the tradition of environmental writing, from Thoreau to David Gessner. Also in the series: a patriarchal cult in Alaska, homesteading, and the “new domesticity.”
...moreThe Walden game
Ready to achieve virtual self-reliance? The National Endowment for the Arts grant has recently awarded the University of Southern California a $40,000 grant to produce a video game based on Henry David Thoreau’s works where players can “follow in the virtual footsteps of Thoreau and conduct their own experiments in living deliberately.” Other literary-based media […]
...moreThe Diviner’s Tale
Morrow’s supple prose is grounded in lyricism, prose unafraid to give the reader both the forest and the trees. Bradford Morrow’s new novel, a feminist interpretation of fairy-tale tropes, explores the life of Cassandra: single-mother, teacher, dowser.
...moreKeep the Kevlar Handy: The Rumpus Interview with Mark Slouka
“In America, we tend to think belief trumps knowledge. To tease out the truth from the fabric of lies that surrounds us requires a certain degree of intelligence. Which is bad news for us, alas.
...moreTake a Hike, or “Thoreau Was a Neuroscientist”
Stop reading this and go outside and take a walk somewhere nature-like. Right now. Okay, did you go? Good. Now you might actually pay attention to me.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Robert Sullivan
Journalist Robert Sullivan often documents unlovely corners of the natural world: The Meadowlands (1998) turned a naturalist’s eye on a dispiriting region of northern New Jersey notable for its Mafia dumping grounds, while in Rats (2004) Sullivan gave Ratus norvegicus the Dian Fossey treatment. His latest book, The Thoreau You Don’t Know, attempts to recuperate […]
...moreLife in the Woods
Peter Rock’s darkly evocative fifth novel follows a father and daughter’s underground existence in a city park.
...more