Genny Lim's KRA! and WIlliam Crossman's War in America - Poetry for Peace

Born in San Francisco, Genny Lim, San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate, earned a BA and an MA from San Francisco State University. The poems in KRA! invoke history, myth, biography, political confrontations, and personal experience. Lim writes about fellow writers, musicians, and radical cultural activists Francisco X. Alarcon, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Fred Ho, and Alfonso Texidor. “Odes” are dedicated to the people of Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and Flint, Michigan. In their lyric fiber, the poems themselves struggle for the survival of cultures of mutual respect and solidarity in the face of rapacious capitalism.

When William Crossman's War in America was printed by Arroyo-Sheldon Publishers in 1993, its battle-cry poems became an instant “hit” radical pamphlet—sold at human rights rallies and marches—and quickly disappeared as all copies of the small press run were snapped up. This 25th anniversary edition has those poems, some revised, and newer poems, and an excerpt from the libretto of John Brown’s Truth, Crossman’s musical of récitatif, improvised music, and dance.