KtBlog

tree-buds

Poems for the Cruelest Month

All of the intensity and unpredictability of this season, the surges of hope and terror, the stirring of memory and desire—word images, symbols, and sounds arranged in rhythm, engaged in elegy and mystery may be our best bet for helping us hold it all.

Image of bubbles beneath the blue-green water with a misty blue sky above

Baptism

The still surface lifted by morning fog
as if a bed sheet
that I’m beneath, in the silt, hair reaching,
skin frog-throat white

Days Like Dominoes

Days Like Dominoes

My thoughts these days are fraught, frazzled little things still precious even though they are as clumsy and malleable as the playdough jewels my daughter likes to shape. 

Mary Oliver and her dog, Perry. Photograph by Rachel Brown.

Joy Before Death: Following the Path of Mary Oliver

From Buddhism to science to the end of life.

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Stolen Apples

an elegy for Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Killing the Buddha

The First Long, Dark Night After The Earthquake

A dry hot month to beat the records was passing its torch to the newspapers when the earthquake struck early Wednesday, causing untold damage and ceaseless unhappiness as the tremors…

leaves_of_grass

Scripture For A Dead God

Celebrating 160 years of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

"<a href="testng">Oh God</a> Oh God Oh God"

Evidence of Your Journey

From our new e-book,Oh God Oh God Oh God: Essays on Sex and Religion, available now!

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Still Slowing Down for Poetry: For Mark Strand, 1934-2014

As I crawled my way out of college, and started stretching toward graduate studies, I stumbled on an essay in the New York Times Book Review. I’d never heard of…

Fax

Evil Brands, 7th Heaven and Kirk: News Roundup

  Do brands make people less religious? — I’ll fax you my reply   Bad TV pastor: I furrow my brow — secretly liked the show   Movie Review: Left…

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Some Thoughts /About/ The Rapture

Why would God chaff all these people? — I don’t understand     Is this stuff even in the Bible? — I can’t get an answer     Dogs don’t…

In bloom peach tree orchard in western Colorado.

Belief

A drama in three vignettes.

Killing the Buddha

Win Bassett on the Blog Train

A literary blog train started by @bethkepler which has stopped by (in succession) @melissaduclos, @modmyth, @kayaoakes @otherspoon and @marykvalle has lumbered up to newly minted Buddha-killer Win Bassett’s station. What…

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This Mutant Genre

The introduction to a new anthology Radiant Truths: Essential …. Essays on American Belief

Killing the Buddha

Indictment of the Parents Who Didn’t Take Me to Church

For not giving my week a structure besides school and its poorly hidden rehearsal for work.   For letting me learn to fidget in an audience and walk out on…

Cancer Cannot.

Doggerel Fails Me

An excerpt from the new e-book Cancer Doesn’t Give a Shit About Your Stupid Attitude.

Killing the Buddha

Satan Is Real

He’s the only thing real in Utah.

by Maqroll via Flickr

Satan Is Real

He’s the only thing real in Utah.