Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks gives us “Leonard: The Dad From A Different Generation.”Next, Gayle Brandeis offers a personal and insightful portrait of female body image in the Saturday Essay, “Thunder,...
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The Father of the Arrow is the Thought by Christopher Deweese
Perhaps we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but then again, don’t covers often give us clues? Clues about content and structure and style? Clues that beckon to us as readers, or caution us, or...
View Article88 Maps by Rob Carney
Rob Carney’s 88 Maps is a raucous and ruminative, plangent and piquant collection of 32 poems arranged into five sections where the first and last sections are each comprised of a single long poem and...
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The Rumpus Interview with Karen Salyer McElmurray
I first met Karen Salyer McElmurray in the spring of 2011 when she was teaching in the MFA program at Georgia College & State University. As a visiting writer, I was awed by Karen’s humility and...
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Pansy by Andrea Gibson
Sometimes I come upon a book for review entirely by happenstance. An advanced copy or a new release arrives unexpectedly in my mailbox, I read the book as my schedule permits, and I find myself...
View ArticleWeekend Rumpus Roundup
First, National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy talks with Deesha Philyaw in the Saturday Interview. They discuss themes pertinent to Detroit, the setting of Flournoy’s book, The Turner House. Some...
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Listening to Tao Yuan Ming by Dennis Maloney
I am always grateful for poetry—for its volatility and vulnerability, the range of emotion a single book, or even a single poem, can contain. But I am especially grateful just now to Dennis Maloney...
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Trouble the Water by Derrick Austin
Trouble the Water is an auspicious debut, a deep and resonant volume which nurses wonder in the face of sorrow and anger, wonder in the presence of loss. Here we follow a speaker who proclaims early...
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The Rumpus Interview With Brenda Miller
Fourteen years ago, as a Master’s student in poetry at Western Washington University, I signed up for a pleasingly mysterious course called “The Lyric Essay.” The professor, Brenda Miller, introduced...
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In the Gun Cabinet by Mike Lala
Ask yourself what image comes to mind—not just comes really but leaps, springs—when you think of your childhood. It might be a pick-up truck no one ever drove, or a grandfather clock someone seemed to...
View ArticleWeekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Michael Wasson’s imagistic prose poetry fills the Saturday Essay. Wasson’s dreamlike narrative describes a first day of school from his childhood. Wasson recalls the teacher taking attendance,...
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Primer by Aaron Smith
Aaron Smith always says the hard, true thing. This is different from saying the hard thing only, or the true thing only. Some poems are hard, but leave us without relief or reward. Yes, that’s hard, we...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Inaugural Poems
Official inaugural poems are a strange beast. There have only been five of them and the one we recognize as the first, Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright,” wasn’t composed for President Kennedy’s...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Inaugural Poems: Julie Marie Wade
Each day from January 7 through January 20, Rumpus Original Poems will feature work in response to the coming presidential inauguration. Today’s poem is from Julie Marie Wade. *** Psalm in the Spirit...
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The Rumpus Interview with Dawn Lundy Martin
In November 2015, the Miami-based literary arts organization Reading Queer brought a group of queer-identified writers to present their work at a series of events co-sponsored by the Miami Book Fair...
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the consequences of my body by Maged Zaher
I always judge a book by its cover. Perhaps I am not alone in this cavalier disregard of an old adage. Of course, I go in search of particular authors and specific presses, too, but without...
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The Queer Valentine of the Century: Jenny Johnson’s In Full Velvet
A sticker on the back of my advanced review copy of Jenny Johnson’s In Full Velvet notes, “On sale February 14, 2017 from Sarabande Books.” And here it is, February 14, 2017, and I am reading this book...
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Blur, Cross, Pulverize, Confront, Remember: Talking with James Allen Hall
In spring 2006, I flew from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Austin, Texas, to attend my first ever AWP conference. I went because James Allen Hall, a doctoral student at the University of Houston and an...
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Poetry That Makes You Nearly Miss the Plane: The Complete Works of Pat Parker...
At the Miami Book Fair in November 2015, I heard the indefatigable poet, scholar, and editor Julie R. Enszer read from Lilith’s Demons, her new collection of poems just out from A Midsummer Night’s...
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A Poethead’s Guide to the Galaxy: Talking with David Hernandez
For years, David Hernandez has been a literary luminary, shining his light down a path I am eager to follow. His first collection of poems, A House Waiting for Music (Tupelo Press, 2003), was published...
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