Happy National Poetry Month! Vivat Poesis! This poem asks a question that transforms a conventional idea, then illuminates a tiny detail, casting it in a sacred light. We can do this, too. For example, take seize the day. But why seize? Why not loosen the day? You can create kickass list poems this way! Go [...]
A hand reaches out through the cold, a voice warmly asks - are you okay? Definitely, more of this, please. Now, try this: write your own More Of This, Please poem. Please, may the ground of our connection be kindness and generosity. Avec amour, Krayna More Of This, Please In grad school I had a writing [...]
Let this month of purification free us of despair. Let the spirit of creation move freely within us. Let there be courage to call down joy. Let the heart’s dreams be silent no more. Let it be so. Book of Genesis Suppose there was a book full of only the word, let – from whose clipped [...]
May we be wise in discerning what to resist and what to embrace while enacting our creative visions with “hope: a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” (Daniel Wahl) XO, Krayna Advice to Myself #2: Resistance (excerpt) Resist the thought that you may need a savior, or another special being to walk beside you. Resist the [...]
I love this wimsical image of the Japanese tanuki* upon his golden throne with a halo of divine light. The tanuki, or "raccoon dog," has a heart of gold that emanates light. Like water, the heart's light is gentle, yet it's one of the strongest forces on earth: Nothing in the world is a soft [...]
It’s Election month, thus I pondered what poem to offer up. Anna Świrszczyńska (a.k.a., Anna Swir)! Yes! A Polish poet (1909 -1984), she joined the Resistance movement during the Nazi occupation of Poland. In 1974 she published Building the Barricade, a volume about the suffering she experienced during WWII. Despite unimaginable atrocities she witnessed, her work [...]
I chose Two Horses, an homage to A Blessing by James Wright, to celebrate Poem of the Month’s 18th Anniversary. Here, the speaker watches two horses in wonderment, and finally, against the backdrop of a vast sky, has an illuminating insight. Epiphanies defy explanation and I love that. With bows of gratitude to poems, poets [...]
This month's poem is rich with wondering, imagery and memory. Try this: Write a question, then another, and so on, until you have twenty questions. Notice the nature of the questions he asks. You might start with Did I forget ____? or Did I miss ____? or What if ____?. Include a choice that made [...]
With love for Plain Jane Goodall. Friends, I give you this prose poem by the inimitable Alice Walker. In this, and her other poems, she invites us to recover awareness of our own beauty and that of existence itself. I read this ode to Jane Goodall, who could care less about what the advertising industry [...]
Complicated pleasure unfolds during our poet's glowing refrigerator tour: eroticism, sweatshops, sex, churches, yearning. Try this: Write about the contents of a refrigerator from your childhood. Don’t remember? Make it up! Have a wonderful, safe July, friends. Avec amour, Krayna Refrigerator, 1957 More like a vault — you pull the handle out and on the shelves: [...]