Announcing The Rumpus Poetry Book Club

So this has been in the works for the better part of a month now, but it’s really come together in the last couple of days. The Rumpus is going to do a poetry version of its book club. I believe it was Matthew Zapruder’s idea, but four of us will be sharing the responsibility: Matthew, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Camille Dungy, and me. We’ll take turns choosing a book of poetry that’s about to be released, blog about it, and lead a discussion about it with the people who are part of the book club, hopefully with the poet along for the ride.

Camille will be running the first one, and I’m excited to say that the book is by an old friend of mine from my Stanford days, Shane Book. Those are the basics. It’s 20 bucks a month, and for that you get the book about a month early, and if you like, you can write a review of it for The Rumpus. We’ll choose the best one and run it on the front page as a feature. And you get to be part of the conversation. If you want a sense of how much fun that could potentially be, check out the uncut discussion of our first regular Book Club book, Citrus County. Now why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?