When most of the writing you do is for others, you sometimes crave a project that's entirely your own.

 

For 21 years I lived within walking distance of Washington National Cathedral, where I spent countless hours relaxing on the grounds and squinting upwards at the building's gargoyles and grotesques. In 2012, when I published Looking Up, cathedral leadership graciously gave me permission to show photographs of the stone beasties that inspired the book's 53 poems. Each poem represented a different exercise in style and form; Looking Up includes sonnets, a triolet, a rubaiyat, a ghazal, a villanelle, Japanese tanka, alliterative verse, elegiac couplets, and other flirtations with meter and rhyme.

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World Fantasy Award nominee Anna Tambour praised Looking Up: "For anyone who appreciates ugly beauty and intelligent fun, the pun, the music, the raucously empathetic life condensed to verse that runs over your tongue like a brook over stones . . . a superb gift for someone you love, if that person is worth a gargoyle's stony regard."

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Order a copy of Looking Up from Amazon here.