Subtext Rising to the Surface: A Conversation with Matthew Olzmann
Poet Matthew Olzmann discusses his work with Julie Marie Wade.
...more
Posts Tagged: William Carlos Williams
To the Moon: Talking with Heather Christle
Heather Christle discusses her debut work of nonfiction, THE CRYING BOOK.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #170: Richard Blanco
“I guess you could say that engineering paved the road to poetry for me, pardon the pun.”
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Terrance Hayes
“They are poems before sonnets.”
...more
Moments within Days within Seasons: Talking with Alicia Mountain
Alicia Mountain discusses her debut collection, High Ground Coward, the surveillance state, and queer representation in the poetry world.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #136: Shy Watson
“I do think when I write it’s kind of therapy or having to tell someone everything or maybe writing it gets it out of my head?”
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Eloisa Amezcua
Eloisa Amezcua discusses her collection From the Inside Quietly, bilingualism in poetry, and the connection between whiteness and yeast infections.
...more
Map-Making: Alex Dimitrov’s Together and By Ourselves
At one point, I write in my margin: There is no X marks the spot for treasure here. The map is the treasure. Which is another way of saying: this book is the bounty; these poems are the gold.
...more
FUNNY WOMEN #157: Habits of Less Successful Writers
So much can be learned from the writing habits of successful writers, but what can we learn from the ones who aren’t doing quite as well?
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Iris Dunkle
Iris Jamahl Dunkle on her new collection Interrupted Geographies, writing against the pastoral tradition, the power of persona poems, and the town of Pithole.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Erika L. Sánchez
Erika L. Sánchez discusses her new collection Lessons on Expulsion, pushing back against sexism and misogyny, being a troublemaker, and donkeys.
...more
The Last Book I Loved: Poeta en San Francisco by Barbara Jane Reyes
Through incisive and uncompromising verse, Reyes unearths the hypocrisy at work in exalted American democracy…
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Erik Kennedy
Poet Erik Kennedy discusses literary community and his formative years as a young writer in New Jersey, and shares two new prose poems.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Clarence Major
Clarence Major discusses his new collection Chicago Heat and Other Stories, the artist’s role in politics, Donald Trump and race relations, and Paris in the good old days.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #60: Leah Kaminsky
Leah Kaminsky’s debut novel, The Waiting Room, depicts one fateful day in the life of an Australian doctor and mother, Dina, living in Haifa, Israel. Dina is trying to maintain normalcy as she goes about her work as a family doctor, cares for her son, and fights to preserve her faltering relationship with her husband, […]
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 6): “To Elsie”
Now the battle is joined. I will prosecute my part of it as a writer till the last dog dies…
...moreThe 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.
...moreLucia Berlin Unplugged
When there’s emotional truth, there follows a rhythm, and I think a beauty of image, because you’re seeing clearly. In 1996 Lucia Berlin’s students Kellie Paluck and Adrian Zupp interviewed her for a class on poetics. Published now at Lit Hub, via Picador, Berlin talks about her influences, plain-style poets like William Carlos Williams, Robert […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Terese Svoboda
Poet Terese Svoboda talks about her biography of the socialist-anarchist firebrand and modernist poet Lola Ridge, Anything That Burns You, and remembers a time when the political was printed in newspapers.
...more
R.I.P.: Fantastic Casket
As far as the market right now, this is the moment to own it on caskets because we have the baby boomer generation coming up, and they’re doubling the number of deaths that are happening.
...more
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.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Not That Town
Times like those lead you to believe that writing is, before it’s anything else, about simply getting it straight.
...moreRose is a Rose is a Password
Sophisticated potentates/misrepresenting Emirates. That couplet may not win any Griffins or Pushcarts, but it could keep the hackers at bay. According to USC computational linguists and their “Poetry Method” of password protection, Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams may have found a second calling as cybersecurity aides.
...more
Remarks On Walking Around in Boston
As you walk, you become intensely aware in two directions. There is the outer world, and there is your head space. It is not necessary or possible really to keep strict focus on one or the other. They blend together.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Les Standiford
Prolific writer and Director of the FIU Creative Writing Program Les Standiford takes a look back at his career in books, including Water to the Angels and Bringing Adam Home, and tells us what’s next.
...moreThe Wheelbarrow is Real
When we read this poem in an anthology, we tend not to think of the chickens as real chickens, but as platonic chickens, some ideal thing,” William Logan, the scholar who recently discovered Mr. Marshall’s identity, said in an interview. It’s a rare feat to be able to locate the tangible sources of inspirations of […]
...moreOur Own Private Lives
Daniel Alarcón interviews Alejandro Zambra for BOMB Magazine; among other things, they touch on William Carlos Williams, Chile, bonsai trees, dictators, and beautiful notebooks.
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #59: Not a Folk Singer
There is a lot to learn from Vashti Bunyan, therefore, about how to live a self-designed life, and how to be unapologetic and decisive about the habit of songwriting.
...morePaterson’s Great Falls, inspiration for writers, named national park
President Barack Obama signed legislation on Monday naming the Great Falls on the Passaic River in Paterson, N.J. a national historic park. The 77-foot falls, site of early American industrial plants, has also inspired American writers. The great 20th century poets William Carlos Williams, whose epic work “Paterson” used the falls and the river as […]
...more