Thoughts On Barbara Krasner’s The Wanderers, by Kalliopy Paleos

The Wanderers, by Barbara Krasner, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2026. Click on image to view or purchase on Amazon.

Thoughts on Barbara Krasner’s The Wanderers

Opening this book is to seat yourself at the table with beauty and the ultimate wealth of true human company. Throughout the poems we experience everything from the bewilderment of emigration to the deepening of family bonds and friendships to the relentless reckoning with implacable illness. 

Krasner travels places and events both public and private, stopping to explore the hearts of people in the poet's life as well as from history (it was a particular treat to find a reference to Crown Prince Rudolf). Krasner's trajectories lead us from the baby Moses in the meditative, penetrating opening poem, "Sister Miriam Sets Him Afloat and Wanders," along avenues of art and poetics to Rembrandt, to the Russian shtetl, to the Lower East Side, then off we go to France - and so many places in between. Every poem is layered with attention to form, grounded with images both tangible and elusively beckoning - and yet also completely fresh every word along the way. 

Some lines I loved: 
"We lost our voices in troop dust"
“…an umbrella useless against the golden drumbeat of time . . .”
"We were the star-studded canaries, voiceless . . ."

I could easily cite 100 more. But then there are poems from which I'd find it futile to extract any one line, such as "Tashlich at Bath Beach, Brooklyn, 1910." The poem offers a surprising illustration of how deep and yet ordinary redemption can be, and the gift of absolution of one another within nature.

These poems are wrought of both the simple and the grand: wheat fields, alleyways of the Jewish quarter, the NYC subway, zoological gardens in Germany. And Krasner shows deftly that beauty cannot be complete without its lesser-appreciated ingredients - displacement and loss: of country, of security, of complete health, but never quite of loved ones. Time and again, the true opulence Krasner points to is the unbroken thread of loving others, keeping the living near, or finding traces of those missing through memory, hope, or misgivings.

Krasner is also adept at offering the reader a distillation of narrative and sensation. One example is hearing breath in tandem with silence in "The Labyrinth"; another is the near-synesthesia in the prose poem "In Transition," where in addition to the visuals painted onto the page, we can hear and see elements not directly named yet somehow evoked: scraping insects hovering, sunlight and heat changing over the course of the poem's narrative time. 

The section Tabula Rasa is where spirals come full circle but remain in movement, in the concentric contraction and expansion of Krasner’s identity and poetic spirit/sensors as she shares her personal experiences with illness. Gripping to read among others are "Rest Awhile," "Caravaggio in the ICU" and "Pemphigus Haibun." 

And BRAVO also to Shanti Arts Publishing for lush reproductions of the artworks included - a truly wonderful book, not to be missed.

Kalliopy Paleos

Kalliopy Paleos studied contemporary American poetry at SUNY Brockport. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as Best Microfiction for 2026 and completed her third full-length novel translation from Greek. Poetry and prose publications include 10 by 10 Flash Fiction, ERGON Magazine for Greek-American Arts and Letters, and Flash Boulevard. She is currently trying to improve her cooking, but it’s not going well. Her favourite place for time travel is the 18th century.

Barbara Krasner

This poem was published in one of the Ekphrastic Challenges.