Christopher Cokinos was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He earned his BA in English from Indiana University in Bloomington, where he worked on the staff of the Indiana Review. He received his MFA in writing from Washington University in St. Louis, which awarded him a university fellowship. Cokinos currently teaches at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.

"The poems of Christopher Cokinos are brave, deeply intelligent, and exquisitely clear. Whether examining a treacherous war or the birds and trees immediately outside our windows, he cracks the boundaries between 'public' and 'privy' or 'natural' and 'otherwise,' reminding us again and again of the utter necessity of reciprocal, compassionate attention at this end of the twentieth century... These poems elevate and teach. We are lucky to live with them."— Naomi Shihab Nye

When I step into warm December air
And see the gray-velvet, flame-shaped buds
On the warp and spike of winter trees,
When my whole body goes sense-drunk
With the smell of mud this soon, too soon:
My mind looks past the crocus shoots, the t-shirts,
Hears past the cardinal's call, that clear what cheer


what cheer
And thus beyond this beautiful thaw
To the day's plot on the curve, the graph, the vision
Of a smog-streaked sun, so fiercely red: how this day
Is just another in the century's hottest year, and warming.
On the TV above the bar, a weatherman grinned

Stay tuned--
for a great forecast! T. looked at his plate, saying
We need more light than heat--to see a planet dying.