Walt Whitman
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The Rumpus Interview with Gregory Pardlo
Poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo discusses the reverence for poetry found in other cultures, how he strings a book together, and the future of American poetry in light of our national crisis.
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A Death Blow Can Be a Life Blow to Some
What does it mean to be carried away? To be captured, carried off, liberated? To lose control of oneself? Lerner doesn’t show concern for questions like these. More generally, The Hatred of Poetry takes little interest in the rarities of…
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The Rumpus Interview with Connie Wanek
Connie Wanek discusses her latest book, Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems, the challenge of looking back at older poems, and what prioritizing writing looks like.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview with Jesse Lee Kercheval
I have learned to put myself, my ego, to one side and truly experience someone else’s poetry.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Something’s Happening Out There
The big crowd stretched form the gold-domed State House to Park Street. I had the urgent feeling that we were part of something. That we counted.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Dugout
So much of politics is symbolic speech in the service of the syncopations of the lives we actually live. But the ways we gather to vote is with our bodies. It’s the dance that goes along with those rhythms.
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The Rumpus Interview with Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath talks about his new collection, XX: Poems For The Twentieth Century, capitalism, history, and what it might mean to write a wordless poem.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Defeat
It never occurred to me to try to write poems without the guidance of other poets and poems.
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The Rumpus Interview with J. Aaron Sanders
J. Aaron Sanders discusses his debut novel, Speakers of the Dead, his writing process, and the wisdom of sharing his early drafts with his students.
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If Walt Whitman Rode a Rollercoaster
Swift sweeping clusters of revelation! Plunging into pockets of the earth’s belly, and Shooting up into the blue and white woven infinity of the sky! Walt Whitman, author of Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself, is famous for his…
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Sarah Palin, the Transcendentalist
From Lincoln’s famous love of quoting Shakespeare to George Bush’s prodigious reading habits, American politics have always mingled with the literary pantheon. Now that Sarah Palin is back in the news for her endorsement of Donald Trump, Jeet Heer traces…
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The Amazing Disappearing Woman Writer
To refuse to disappear at mid-life—I am forty-two as of the writing of this essay—is perhaps the best rebellion a woman poet can make to the literary world and to the world at large.