Madeleine Cravens

Biography

Madeleine Cravens is the author of Pleasure Principle: Poems (Scribner, 2024). Her poetry can be found in the New Yorker, the Nation, Kenyon Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She was a 2022-2024 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. 

See Work

POETRY / Spring 2024

Bodega Bay

By Madeleine Cravens

We watched a movie about
an orchestral conductor, a powerful 
woman who groomed young musicians. 
I didn’t understand the ending. 
Driving to the beach, it began to rain. 

POETRY / Spring 2024

5 North

By Madeleine Cravens

Between Los Angeles and Oakland, 
there was snow on the grass-covered mountains,
which made a strange pattern, like brushstrokes
on paper.

POETRY / Spring 2024

Point Reyes

By Madeleine Cravens

It was late June, the solstice. 
The day took hours to end. You look like me,
my father said quietly.