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Till att börja med har The Rumpus förmodligen den mest övertygande deklarationen av alla litterära webbplatser som jag har besökt.
"Welcome to TheRumpus.net. We don’t say that lightly—we’re thrilled you’re here. At The Rumpus, we’ve got essays, reviews, interviews, music, film, and poetry—along with some kick-ass comics. We know how easy it is to find pop culture on the Internet, so we’re here to give you something more challenging, to show you how beautiful things are when you step off the beaten path. The Rumpus is a place where people come to be themselves through their writing, to tell their stories or speak their minds in the most artful and authentic way they know how, and to invite each of you, as readers, commenters, or future contributors, to do the same. What we have in common is a passion for fantastic writing that’s brave, passionate and true (and sometimes very, very funny)." Source: Therumpus.net
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Jag inleder med att publicera en dikt av Leah Angstman som har ett intressant anslag. Den publicerades 15 november på webbplatsen.
Where were you when the world broke?, by Leah Angstman
(Published in The Rumpus, November 16th, 2016.)
Not in your echoing womb,
to scream at you across your fields to wake up,
not part of your denial that Earth is burning,
dehydrated, suffocating on itself—
I stood in a blue state
while you bled the red of its people—(Our people: recall how they grew up
across Holt Street, Maple Street from us, yes?)—
delusional that you were the world’s own,
unothered.
I was not your spit-take,
the drop bucket,
flag-raising, barn-burning,
white-hooded bonfires.
I was in my high school art class,
kicking my feet on a stool when JFK was shot, Mom says.
I even remember what I was painting when they made the announcement.
It’s like that.
I was hiding my face in my fingers,
my faith in my chest,
my heart torn from the fabric of my sleeve,
counting to convince math to work,
to STEM for little girl petals becoming,
but numbers broke each column
shrinking.
I was in my room, alone, when we were told we didn’t matter,
that our pussies could be grabbed,
that we were only droughting from Chinese hoax.
We’ll remember where we were.
I was holed inside myself disconnecting my umbilical from what you became,
the land I used to color with my mother’s paints,
before wrong hues muddied,
absence of color, symbol of stop and no and postage due,
white always showing underneath the red.
***
Jag tycker framför allt att The Rumpus håller hög klass när det gäller deras recensioner. Till dessa läggs exklusiva intervjuer med stora namn. Nyligen utfrågades Pulitzer-vinnaren Gregory Pardlo.
Recensionen av Jennifer S. Chengs bok House A som publicerades 25 november upplevde jag som en lockelse in i författarens privata kalejdoskop.
(Utdrag ur Jennifer S. Chengs bok House A. Recension av Kim Liao. Publicerad i The Rumpus, November 25th, 2016.)
X
suppose an attic is where the history of a
past is stored away. in the absence of a
partition, this house is everywhere the
angle of that apex, spread as an
umbrella, a roof in the truest sense.
let us define nostalgia, then, not as a
remembrance but a feeling, familial,
that is on a precipice, vulnerable to the
winds, drifting and swelling for a nest.
***
I en artikel som publicerades igår kan man få lästips inför ledigheten kring julhögtiden. Det är Barbara Berman som tipsar om såväl litteraturvetenskapliga verk som diktsamlingar. En poet som lyfts fram i artikeln är Peter Gizzi, och hans senaste verk Archeophonics.
Glitter, by Peter Gizzi
(From Archeophonics. Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, 2016.)
The old language
renews the pundits’
chatter, can sometimes
bunch in groups,
power jumbotrons,
or one’s laughter
in particular.
Just now, out
the car window
paper flags and
ballots kite.
Feel the parade
of air on your skin.
A cotton shirt
touching it. The
manufactured rays
are ancient, fall
through a time-gone
ticker tape array.
The floats and whorls
and banners above.
The old language
dozing in the sun.
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