December 2002
Star Power
by Philip Huang
Krandall Kraus’ Christmas Poems (AttaGirl Press, $17.95) is perfect for the aspiring writer in your life—all the better if that’s you. Composed each Christmas since 1976, every poem is accompanied by a personal account of that year in Kraus’ life. Like buoys in a night ocean, together they make visible the vast, shifting darkness that swelled to consume a generation of gay men. Still, he proposes, the three wise men walk among us, as beggars and queers, afflicted and widowed, bearing modest gifts and following the infallible Northern star. For Kraus, love is that star: it marks our destination, guides our journey and is the gift we bear. “It can save us all, if only until we regain our strength, if we remember to look for it.”
