Top 21 Posts of 2021
We share our twenty-one most-read pieces of 2021!
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Posts Tagged: Whitman
Reading Whitman While White
It is only by holding Whitman accountable for all of his language that we can also love other parts of his language and poetics.
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Barbara Berman’s 2020 Holiday Poetry Shout-Out
Barbara Berman reviews four books in her 2020 Holiday Poetry Shout-Out
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Divestment
Secrecy stitched us a fraudulent reality. Denial masqueraded as hope.
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Building and Building: Talking with Patricia Spears Jones
Patricia Spears Jones discusses her body of work, the future of poetry, and more.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers discusses her new collection, THE TILT TORN AWAY FROM THE SEASONS.
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A Metaphysical Inquiry: Nick Laird’s Feel Free
The work maintains a wondering backward, as it were, tracing the varied details of lived experience.
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Between Sex and Death: Deborah Landau’s Soft Targets
Survival, for Landau, is both instinctual and ultimately pointless.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Whitman Notebook: Which Is Ahead
Walt Whitman says that to be an American is to be a poet.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Whitman Notebook: From Yourself
To write is not to dream.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Whitman Notebook: Summer Grass
Whatever is undiscovered in “Song of Myself” is in the soil.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Jesse Ball
Jesse Ball discusses his new novel, Census, the inherent sinister nature of institutions, and creating imaginary authors.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #25: Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been, a Success?
In America, everybody, it seems, wants to be a success. Me, too. Recently, I confided to a family member that sometimes, in moments of deep despair (fortunately they are fairly uncommon), I find myself contemplating suicide as the most sensible retirement plan. The road ahead, paved with potholes and poverty, sometimes doesn’t look all that […]
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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.
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The Rumpus Interview with Micah Perks
Micah Perks talks about her new novel, What Becomes Us, America’s cultural and mythical heritage, and why every novel is a political novel.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: April, 1968
Used to see lots of psychedelic princes and princesses on Haight Street. Not many these days. But here were hundreds of the turned on and tuned in, dressed like birds and peacocks in heat.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #54: Jade Chang on The Wangs vs. the World
With a mix of humor, agility, and insight, Jade Chang’s debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World (HMH Books, October 2016), tells a fresh immigrant story. Charles Wang has left his native homeland to become a successful businessman in America. The book takes us on a journey with his whole family as they navigate the […]
...morePernicious Individualism
If anything, Emerson’s transparent eyeball is now a webcam hacked by the NSA. Over at Lit Hub, Jonathon Sturgeon writes about the supposedly rampant and undying force of individualism in American writing—the “imperial self,” an all-encompassing and socially blind thing—from Emerson and Whitman to Safran Foer and Franzen.
...moreA Mélange of Loafing and Looking
In Leslie Jamison’s introduction to a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days & Collect, excerpted over at Slate, the word “specimen” is rescued from its isolating, clinical connotations, instead becoming realigned with Whitman’s vision of abundance and celebration. Jamison recounts her own experiences reading Specimen Days, alone and with friends, returning to the work for […]
...moreDean Young’s The Art of Recklessness: A Review?
“The emphasis on craft, on procedures and techniques, is like the creation of perfectly safe nuclear reactors without acknowledging the necessity of radioactive matter for the core.”
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