IthacaLit has posted two poems online that accepted last year. The poems, “After Hours,” and “Talking to the Octopus,” appear in the Archives tab for Fall 2015. They are also included in Coltrane’s God.

Delighted to see Jennifer Levin’s article in the 12/11/15 Pasatiempo on Coltrane’s God and the book launch this coming Sunday at 5 at Teatro Paraguas.

Debbie DeRosa, editor of South 85 Review, nominated one of my two poems that appeared in the Summer 2015 issue, “Donations,” for the Best of the Net for this year.

The Wallapa Bay Artist Residency program accepted my application for a one-month residency in April, 2016. It is located on Long Beach Peninsula, southwestern Washington (state), along one of the continent’s richest estuaries.  I am honored and excited to be invited!

In the US mail I received a certificate from the National Federation of Press Women for Second Place in the 2015 Creative Verse — Book category competition for The Water Leveling with Us, along with a typescript of the unnamed judge’s comments.  The comments reveal a thorough reading of the book. The full text of the comments is below:

Water sinks to its lowest level; therefore, the title of Levering’s collection—by bringing water down to us—sets up readers for the text’s contemplation of the “big brained apes” we are, destroying ecosystems and moving toward planetary demise. Recalling our undeclared war on Viet Nam heightened by a president who “stokes fear in millions” and more recent reminders of costly warfare citing water boarding and drone pilots, Levering reserves his most stinging judgments for the decisions causing thawing permafrost with “avenging seas” and the debacle of the Deepwater Horizon Spill. His most singular and specific pieces are, inevitably, the most personal and personally moving. He mourns a sea turtle’s need for peace, protection, and most tellingly, hope for her hatchlings with the survival of her species increasingly beleaguered. He deplores the cruelty of the racehorse industry casually exploiting and destroying these animals bred for heavy muscles and tiny, fragile feet that easily shatter under stress. His generally straightforward language occasionally rises when referencing “the red mouth of a traffic light,” but remains steadfastly literal for the most part. Perhaps the most moving and encouraging piece brings us Kent Clegg in his ultralight aircraft leading young whooping cranes on an ancient migration route and teaching them “ancestral flyways…they didn’t know they knew.” The Water Leveling with Us’ hectoring anger and blame also contains some occasional, essential reminders that Clegg’s big brained ape’s conscious choice and the sea turtle’s instinct, anthropomorphized as “hope” may be all that’s realistically possible.

Coltrane’s God is not yet in hand, indeed, the final manuscript corrections were just turned in to the publisher, but on faith in the book’s implacable path from publisher to press, through the myriad tunnels of encrypted data streams and software hallelujah conversions, it shall be printed, bound, and delivered in time for the launch,  scheduled for Sunday, December 13th of this year at 5:00 pm (or 17:00) at the Teatro Paraguas (see calendar entry on this web site). Hooray!

Jay Udall, editor of Gris-Gris, just accepted two poems which will be in my forthcoming Coltrane’s God, “Fiddle Fest Contestants” (about my itinerant fiddler grandfather) and “A Night in Tunisia,” about a wild night at the Mineshaft Tavern, in Madrid, Nuevo Mexico. Although Udall is thoroughly ensconced among Louisiana bayou poetry-voodoo (thus the name of his journal), he has NM roots (brother to our US Senator) and is familiar with the crazy music scene at the Mineshaft Tavern.

While I was in London in early September, Michelle Lesko, editor at IthacaLit, contacted me with acceptances of two poems slated for my new book, Coltrane’s God. The poems are “After Hours” and “Talking to the Octopus,” the latter in honor of the Santa Fe jazz drummer, John Trentacosta.

The I-70 Review accepted two more poems for publication, “Animal Sighting,” (which might be changed to simply “Sighting,” and “Scenes from Seaside Inn.”  Scheduled publication date is September 2016, and the release will coincide with a contributor’s reading at The Writer’s Place in Kansas City, MO.

The Southern Poetry Review issue 53:1 is now out, which contains my poem “Terminal,” which strikes me as an odd word for an airplane station.