KtBlog

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.

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
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.

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 continue throughout the night, one rumble after another. At first the meteorologists reporting declining heights of lakes and rivers were the stars of summer in…

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

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 the author, a poet named Mark Strand, but the title caught my fancy, “Slow Down for Poetry.” It was a mantra that I desperately wanted…

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 Behind Kirk Cameron, I take it all back

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 go to Heaven? I think I’m going to cry

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 is Win doing? Answers right here! What am I working on? I use to serve as a prosecutor in North Carolina, and I loved when…

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

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 hearing nothing of use; For teaching me to judge singers by their notes and not their thoughts, for seeing next to nothing in stained…

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