George Looney, M.F.A.

George Looney, M.F.A.
Distinguished Professor, Creative Writing and English
Editor, Lake Effect
137 Kochel

Mailing Address:
PENN STATE BEHREND
170 KOCHEL CENTER
ERIE, PA 16563

George Looney's eleventh collection of poetry, What Light Becomes: The Turner Variations, has won the 2018 Red Mountain Poetry Prize and will be published in June 2019. His novel, Report from a Place of Burning, published in 2018, was co-winner of the Leapfrog Press Fiction Award. His other books include an award-winning novella Hymn of Ash, published by Elixir Press in 2008; as well as the poetry collections Meditations Before the Windows Fail, published by Lost Horse Press in 2015; the book-length poem Structures the Wind Sings Through, published by Full/Crescent Press in 2014; Monks Beginning to Waltz, published by Truman State University Press in 2012; A Short Bestiary of Love and Madness, published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2011; Open Between Us, released in 2010 by Turning Point, an imprint of WordTech communications; The Precarious Rhetoric of Angels, which won the tenth annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was published in 2005; Animals Housed in the Pleasure of Flesh, which won the 1995 Bluestem Award; and Attendant Ghosts, published by Cleveland State University Press in 2000.

His poetry has won a number of other awards, including the Larry Levis Editors' Award in Poetry from The Missouri Review and prizes from Zone 3, New Letters, The Literary Review, and Flyway: A Literary Review.

He has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and two grants from the Ohio Arts Council, as well as a $10,000 fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for 2006.

His work has been published in such journals as The Southern Review, New England Review, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Ohio Review, Indiana Review, Ascent, Connecticut Review, and many others.

For eight years he served as editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review, for which he is now translation editor. His M.F.A. is from Bowling Green State University. He is editor-in-chief of Lake Effect and chair of the creative writing program at Penn State Behrend, and he was co-founder of the original Chautauqua Writers' Festival.

In 2007, he received Penn State's Undergraduate Program Leadership Award. In 2012, he received Penn State Behrend's Council of Fellows Faculty Research Award.

Courses Taught

  • ENGL 006, Creative Writing Common Time (formerly ELISH 001)
  • ENGL 015, Rhetoric and Composition
  • ENGL 050, Introduction to Creative Writing
  • ENGL 129, Shakespeare
  • ENGL 209, Journal or Magazine Practicum (formerly ELISH 002)
  • ENGL 212, Introduction to Fiction Writing
  • ENGL 213, Introduction to Poetry Writing
  • ENGL 263, Reading Poetry
  • ENGL 296 & 496, Independent Study
  • ENGL 401W, Creative Writing Theory (formerly ELISH 484W)
  • ENGL 413, Advanced Poetry Writing (formerly ELISH 427)
  • ENGL 423, Poetry Writing Workshop (formerly ELISH 430)
  • ENGL 437, The Poet in America
  • ENGL 444, Shakespeare
  • ENGL 458, Twentieth-Century Poetry
  • ENGL 494, Senior Thesis in English (formerly ELISH 494A)
  • ENGL 495, Internship (formerly ELISH 495)
  • PSU 007, First-Year Seminar Behrend

 

Review of Wendell Mayo’s Twice-Born World: Stories of Lithuania , Mid-American Review - 2023

"After Heartbreak", The Cafe Review - 2023

"The Woman in Hopper's Nighthawks", Connecticut River Review - 2023

The Most Sordid and Pathetic Acts, The Pomegranate London - 2023

"Despite Heraclitus", Book of Matches - 2023

"Wisdom is to speak the truth and act in keeping with its nature" and "What is not yet known those blinded by bad faith can never learn", Cider Press Review - 2023

A Symphony No One Can Hear, The Laurel Review - 2023

Imaginary Numbers, On the Banks of the Lethe, and Where Blue Herons Carve Air, Talking River Review - 2023

Last Day in Kinsale, Plainsongs - 2023

To Live Between Fronts, The Asheville Poetry Review - 2023

"After the Carnival Closes Down", Verse Daily - November 20, 2023

"Worthy of Note", Taos Journal of Poetry - November 2, 2023

Birds of Sympathy: Correspondences - September, 2023

The Acrobatic Company of the Invisible - September, 2023

The Visibility of Things Long Submerged - August, 2023

"The Moment of Listening", The Missouri Review - June 12, 2023

Statue of an Old Sailor in the Rain, Throats to the Sky - February, 2023

What We Hear: An Appreciation of Richard Hugo's "Langaig", Hermit Feathers Review - 2022

"Without Meaning To," "Ruin," "Illumination," "Still Enough," and "Of Miracles We Are", The Ekphrastic Review - April 18, 2022

"The Music Sparrows Add" and "Some Nights the Sky Has Nothing to Say", Willows Wept Review - 2022

"Bas Relief Is No Relief at All", Humana Obscura - 2022

"Silence, healing" and "They raise their voices at stone idols...they have understood so little of the gods", Pinyon - 2022

"Songs Sung in Absentia" and "A Whiff of the Absolute", The Lakeshore Review - 2022

Remembering the Scent of Fresh-Mown Hay, Vallum - 2022

The Audacity of Wind Straining Shirts, After Hours: A Journal of Chicago Writing and Art - 2022

The harmony past knowing sounds more deeply than the known, Jelly Bucket - 2022

"All the Echoes", I-70 Review - 2022

The Influence of Water and Nothing, Today, Is the Same, Plants and Poetry Journal - 2022

"Signs of the Times,” “What Can’t Hold Up,” and “Pathos in the Persistence of Hedonism", Sequestrum - 2022

The Ceremonies of Discarded Ghosts, The Blue Mountain Review - 2022

"The cosmos works by harmony of tensions, like the lyre and bow” and “Though what the waking see is deadly, what the sleeping see is death”, The Main Street Rag - 2022

To Measure with Any Accuracy, Cloudbank - 2022

"Letter to Plumly from Erie, Late at Night" and "What It Was", American Writer Review - August, 2022

Though what the waking see is deadly, what the sleeping see is death, Verse Daily - March 10, 2022

Ode to the Earth in Translation - November, 2021

Review of Pagan Virtues by Stephen Dunn, Mid-American Review - 2021

An Effigy Burning, Abandoned, Verse Daily - 2021

Close Enough to the River, Cloudbank - 2021

“Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work, and helps make something of the world" and “After death comes nothing hoped for nor imagined” , The Laurel Review - 2021

Of Drive-Ins and Cowboy Bars, Tipton Poetry Journal - 2021

Over Any Music, Chicago Quarterly Review - 2021

The Resurrection of This, Valley Voices - 2021

“This Alphabet of Rendered Ice,” “Wayward Guardian Angels,” and “Rituals in Lingerie and Insomnia”, Flying South - 2021

Something Illegible, The MacGuffin - 2021

'Fire of all things is the judge and ravisher,' and 'The revenant keeps watch over the dead and living', Western Humanities Review - 2021

“The Heart, It’s Said, Wants What the Heart Wants”, Bellevue Literary Review

'The Stones of Ruins a Sentence' and 'The Rhythms of Local Expressions', The American Journal of Poetry - January, 2021

'To Die in Erie, Pennsylvania,' 'Before All Hell Breaks Loose,' 'Sentenced to a Night of Playing the Blues' - 2020

Silence Doesn't Have Even a Hint, Tupelo Quarterly - November, 2020

Tina May Hall's The Snow Collectors, Mid-American Review - 2020

All the Guessing Gets Us, The Florida Review - 2020

'Hummingbird and Window,' 'To Die in Erie, Pennsylvania,' 'Before All Hell Breaks Loose,' 'Sentenced to a Night of Playing the Blues', Dispatches - 2020

'A Glissando on the Quietest Instrument,' 'Almost a Sonnet on a Train to Points West,' and 'The Carcass of What Was', Prism Review - 2020

'An Effigy Burning, Abandoned,' 'Of Erasure and What Goes On,' and 'Memory and Its Relatives', Redactions: Poetry & Politics - 2020

'Music Retrieved,' 'On the Eaves of the House Next Door', Nimrod International Journal - 2020

'Verities We Tend to Ignore' and 'A Solution's Not Redemption', Dogwood - 2020

A Ballad of Anchors & Scythes, Plainsongs - 2020

Anything but Classical, The Laurel Review - 2020

'As Much as It Can Numb Us,' 'Ruminations on the Nature of Space & Self-Deception,' 'What We Have to Hold On To,' 'Sent Us of the Air,' and 'The Josephine Made of Oils', the chariton review - November, 2020

unidentified figure in deserted house, the gettysburg review - October, 2020

The Itinerate Circus: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020 - September, 2020

The Worst May Be Over: Stories - September 1, 2020

'To Touch Ruins like This,' 'Being Here,' and 'Folklore of Wind', the kerf

Work Done on the Flesh, New Flash Fiction Review - 2019

Will-o'-the-Wisp, Cream City Review - 2019

'Correspondence with Fog and Consolation,' 'To Support the Theory,' 'Canine Riffs in the Neighborhood', Ascent - November, 2019

'Raising a Guinness to Forgetfulness,' 'Between the Locals & Their Past,' 'Study in Motion with Ruins,' 'Questions of Space & Time in Kinsale,' and 'Abandoned Stone Cottage in the Hills Above Kinsale', Parhelion - October, 2019

More Than Rumor, Cumberland River Review

'A Study in the Opacity of Memory and Lingerie,' 'Leaving a Place of Smoke and Dire Prophesies,' 'Stories of Blue Herons in Winter', Raritan - 2019

A Falling Piano Is a Classic, Nimrod International Journal - 2019

A Music Tempting to Say, Boulevard - 2019

Don't Mention the Stoli, Naugatuck River Review - 2019

Drunk Ghosts & Redemption, San Pedro River Review - 2019

Etching the Sky with Notes, riverSedge

Segues, Prairie Schooner - 2019

The Amniotic Dark of a Passing Ford, Midwest Review - 2019

What We Take with us, Constellations

'A Mast, Without a Ship, Lit at Night' and 'Of Accuracy & Laws', The Aurorean - 2019

'Air-Born Fugues,' 'Full of Strings and Forgiveness,' 'The Unpredictability of the Past', Potomac Review - 2019

Not Any Sort of Harp, Illuminations - 2019

The soul is undiscovered, though explored forever to a depth beyond report, Hotel Amerika - 2019

What Sorrow Lives In, North Dakota Review - 2019

What Light Becomes: The Turner Variations - June, 2019

'Something Like Spanish,' 'Light That Would Make Rembrandt Weep or Laugh Out Loud', Armarolla - 2018

'That Which Is Indescribable,' 'Almost Mechanical,' 'An Elegant Architecture', Pudding Magazine - 2018

'When the Sky Gets Involved,' 'What Keeps the Dead from Drifting', The Laurel Review - 2018

Churning Up Filthy Water, Kestrel - 2018

Not Even a Decent Wind to Blame, Moon City Review - 2018

Of Light and Shadow, Wilting, Bateau - 2018

Psalms on Sheet Metal with Margaritas, Crab Orchard Review - 2018

The Necessity of Sacrifice, The MacGuffin - 2018

With Calliope Music Wheezing Out Car Radios, AGNI - 2018

Report from a Place of Burning - September, 2018

If the Clown Masks Weren’t in the Way, The New Guard - 2017

Mimicry, The American Journal of Poetry - 2017
Collaborator: Doug Smith

After the Carnival Closes Down, The Gettysburg Review - 2017

Against Memory, the Lights of Cottages, Notre Dame Review - 2017

By the Bandon on a Rare Night of Calm, Hotel Amerika - 2017

It Isn’t Always Classical, Arts & Letters - 2017

Last Words to My Father, Paterson Literary Review - 2017

Poem with the Death of Larry Levis Inside It, The Gettysburg Review - 2017
Collaborator: Doug Smith

The Dust That Come Spring Will Be Loam, Nimrod International Journal - 2017

Time Is a Game Played Beautifully by Children, Dunes Review - 2017

Translations in Coal Dust, Arts & Letters - 2017

Using What Light There Is - 2017

Make It New, He Said, Ilanot Review - July, 2017

Hermits in Our Own Flesh: The Epistles of an Anonymous Monk - 2016

All I Can Taste is the Storm, Cease, Cows - 2016

The Old Pitchfork and Fire Urge, Permafrost - 2016

Faces Turned Away, Concho River Review - 2016

The Under the Rivers Humming Cross of Rome, Georgia, Nimrod International Journal - 2016

A Voice the Bandon Would Recognize, Common Ground Review - 2016

All people ought to know themselves and everyone be wholly mindful, Redactions - 2016

All Subterfuge, Crazyhorse - 2016

Corpses, Like Night Soil, Get Carted Off, The Gettysburg Review - 2016

Enough to Forgive All of History, Apalachee Review - 2016

Sound thinking is to listen well and choose one course of action, Exit 7 - 2016

Stupidity is Better Kept a Secret than Displayed, Ninth Letter - 2016

The Girl Who Made Love in Cemeteries, The Laurel Review - 2016

The Lyrical Prophesies of Spanish Guitars, The Laurel Review - 2016

The Rule that Makes Its Subject is a Sentence of Hard Labor, Ninth Letter - 2016

The Singing of Accidental Larks, MUSE Literary Journal - 2016

This Lapse Between Clouds, Common Ground Review - 2016

With a Pint and Good Company - 2016

Yet Let’s Not Make Rash Guesses Our Most Lucid Thoughts, The Gettysburg Review - 2016

Fishing the Sky without Bait - 2015

The Music of a Thing - 2015

Absent the Pale Towers - 2015

Arguing the same we disagree; singing together we compete - 2015

As all things change to fire, and fire exhausted falls back into things - 2015

Dogs…bark at what they cannot understand - 2015

Early Morning Estrangement and Other Tunes - 2015

From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony - 2015

Hunger, even in the elements, and insolence - 2015

Insolence Needs Drowning Worse than Wildfire - 2015

Just as the river where I step is not the same and is, so I am as I am not - 2015

Music Inherent in the Extremities - 2015

One’s bearing shapes one’s fate - 2015

Sadly, Everything’s in Flux - 2015

This Unapologetic Blue - 2015

Thus in the abysmal dark the soul is known by scent - 2015

Under the Comb the Tangle and the Straight Path Are the Same - 2015

Yearning Hurts, and What Release May Come of It Feels Much like Death - 2015

Meditations Before the Windows Fail - September, 2015

With Walt Whitman in a Couple of Hotel Rooms - July, 2015

An Opera with No Libretto, The Common - 2014

Swear Not by the Moon, th' Inconstant Moon, Prairie Schooner - 2014

Tattoo of a Road Runner, Ambit - 2014

A Very Old Music, Moon City Review - September, 2014

"What Can't Be Said, Ever," "Insomnia as Accomplice," and "Distance as Unreliable Narrator", Moon City Review - September, 2014

'Light & the Remnants of Storm' and 'What It Means to Last', The Aurorean - 2013

Sad on Poles in the Midst of Fields, Blueline - 2013

"Echolocation and Memory", Escape Into Life - 2013

"Woman, Asleep", Construction - 2013

"Palimpsest Vespers" and "Early Light in Erie", Albatross - 2013

An Invisible Violin with Perfect Pitch, The Southern Review - 2013

An Invisible Violin with Perfect Pitch, The Southern Review - 2013

Light & the Remnants of Storm, The Aurorean - 2013

Meditation through a Neon Circle, Bateau - 2013

Meditation Through a Neon Circle, Bateau - 2013

Poe at Home in Kinsale, Georgetown Review - 2013

Poe at Home in Kinsale, Georgetown Review - 2013

The Importance of the Right Punctuation, Agni - 2013

The Importance of the Right Punctuation, Agni - 2013

What It Means to Last, The Aurorean - 2013

"Studio Musician with Trembling Hands and Makers on His Breath", Concho River Review - October, 2013

"Scribbled Water a Constant Reminder", Heliotrope - April, 2013

Monks Beginning to Waltz - 2012

The Eternal Pleasures of Greek Omelets and Love, Pedestal - 2012

'An Indefinable Evening in the Neighborhood' and 'Beauty, Stationary, Is Only Half True', Spillway - 2012

'For Everyone Who Has Lost More Than They Had' and 'Attraction Needs a Medium to Pass from One to Another', Spillway - 2012

'Questions Passing a Small Pennsylvania Town in Autumn' and 'A Skein of Mallards', Silk Road - 2012

An Indefinable Evening in the Neighborhood, Spillway - 2012

Attraction Needs a Medium to Pass From one to Another, Spillway - 2012

Beauty, Stationary, Is Only Half True, Spillway - 2012

For Everyone Who Has Lost More Than They Had, Spillway - 2012

The Dancing Bear and Figaro, The Greensboro Review - 2012

The Vocabulary of Loss, Albatross - 2012

A Short Bestiary of Love and Madness - 2011

Introduction for ‘Dream Landscape with Sleepwalker' - 2011

Here and Now, by Stephen Dunn, Mid-American Review - 2011

Remnants of Another Age, by Nikola Madzirov and House Inspections, by Carsten René Nielsen, Mid-American Review - 2011

Chicken Little and the Boys Have Some Words, Alaska Quarterly Review - 2011

Stephen Dunn: The Desire to Keep Saying Yes, The Georgia Review - 2011

'To Account for Such Grace,' 'Early Pastoral,' 'The Consolation of a Company of Acrobats,' and 'A Temporary Delaying of the Inevitable', The Missouri Review - 2011

As Simple as Math and Gravity, The Chaffey Review - 2011

Months of Close Work with Ice, Xavier Review - 2011

The Music of a Woman’s Spine, Great River Review - 2011

The Second Coming in Muscle and Fake Leather, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature - 2011

To Hell With the Deconstructionists, Bayou Magazine - 2011

Open Between Us - 2010

Claims of the Body, The Laurel Review - 2010

Lack of Intent, Indiana Review - 2010

The Prophet, the Gorge, and the Red Diver, Permafrost - 2010

'A Constellation too Easy to See to Ignore' and 'Our Sentence, It Seems, Release', Bateau - 2010

'At the Farmers’ Market, the Dead' and 'Another Night of Storm in Kinsale', Raritan - 2010

'Madagascar' and 'When the Stones in Ruins Are Damp', Prairie Schooner - 2010

'Monk at the Piano' and 'Unresolved Equations', The Chariton Review - 2010

'No Statues of Blind Poets,' 'Ode to English Landscapes,' 'The Hieroglyph of the Horizon', Minnetonka Review - 2010

'Not Every Song for God' and 'Monsters We Know Well Enough to Name', Spillway - 2010

'Signs of Collapse' and 'Memory Often Doesn’t Play Requests', Illuminations - 2010

'Soundtrack for Mystery in a Field of Muddy Angels' and 'The Bestowing of Grace in Perry Square', Voices Israel - 2010

A History of What Music Can Do, Chautauqua - 2010

Assumptions of Wrens, Yemassee - 2010

Children of the Moon, Whiskey Island Magazine - 2010

Driving at Night in a Storm, Eclipse - 2010

Forgiveness for a Late February Morning, Green Mountains Review - 2010

Morning with Loon Drifting Celtic Waves, The Aurorean - 2010

Of Divinity and a Dog’s Bark, Indiana Review - 2010

Photo of a Cardinal, New England Review - 2010

Slivers of Night, Dreaming, New South - 2010

The Fat Man Sings of Despair, Alaska Quarterly Review - 2010

The Opposite of Love, Cimarron Review - 2010

The Revision of Something Imagined, Zone 3 - 2010

Things Still Worth Trying to Do, Crab Creek Review - 2010

Made of the Body, The Tule Review - January, 2010

Safe Where It Is, Arts & Letters - 2009

The Bitter Residue of Sin, or Lemon, Salt Hill - 2009

'An Ephemeral Epic Written Absentmindedly,' 'Listening to a Scratched Recording of Bird’s ‘Lover Man’,' and 'The Indignity of Being Forgotten', Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley - 2009

'Off the Hook' and 'Maddened by Longing', American Literary Review - 2009

'Out of Jukeboxes and Car Radios' and 'A Failed Translation of the World', The Laurel Review - 2009

'Without Grace, Out of the Sky' and 'The Road Humming a Sinatra Tune', The Chaffey Review - 2009

Before This Sentence Ends, The Florida Review - 2009

From the Get Go, The Dos Passos Review - 2009

Jukebox Snow Angels, Puerto del Sol - 2009

Just Beginning to Fracture, Karamu - 2009

Music Only the Body Can Hear, Seneca Review - 2009

Our Dead Don’t Speak Foreign Tongues, The Southern Review - 2009

Silence and Sound the Body Dances With, Cimarron Review - 2009

Songs of Lost and Remembered Water, The Texas Review - 2009

The Ongoingness of Now, The Journal - 2009

Hymn of Ash - 2008

Under the White Scar of a Face - 2008

Broken Hallelujahs, by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Cimarron Review - 2008

'Breathing in the Red Balloon' and 'Meditation on a Sky Beginning to Snow', The Chaffin Journal - 2008

'Defining Duende' and 'A Sign Coming On, Going Off', Eclipse - 2008

'How a Bus Terminal’s like a Jukebox' and 'Harmonicas and Blue Skies', New England Review - 2008

'Husks,' 'Loss Has Left the Moon Charred,' and 'Some Long Forgotten Sea Chantey', Chautauqua - 2008

'Late Morning Behind a Church in Kinsale' and 'Everything Said', Tar River Poetry - 2008

A Crude Morning Sermon, The Aurorean - 2008

Every Song on the Radio Sad, The Louisville Review - 2008

Forgetting History & Loss, Blueline - 2008

In a Trawler’s Wake, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal - 2008

Lucky Enough to Be Able to Pay in the Y Not Bar, Blue Collar Review - 2008

Meditation at Night on a Woman in Another State, Two Rivers Review - 2008

Older Music from America, Cairn: The New St. Andrews Review - 2008

The Fat Man Remembers a Late Night Thrill, Main Street Rag - 2008

Whatever Light Needs to Be Forgiven Of, Laurel Review - 2008

Rabbis of the Air, by Philip Terman, Mid-American Review - 2007

Under a Sky Like an Opera Gone Mad, Nimrod International Journal - 2007

Between the Sentence and the Line, It Gets Said, Redactions: Poetry & Politics - 2007

'Not Marrow or Muscle, but Love,' 'Migrations,' and 'Figures in the Light and the Cold', Snow*Vigate - 2007

'Long Enough to Gather Dust,' 'Animals in Their Dark Compartments,' and 'Dwarfed by a Pair of Pudgy Hands', REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters - 2007

Between the Touch of One Lover & the Touch of Another, Redivider - 2007

The Ideogram for Passion, Redactions: Poetry & Politics - 2007

'Das Lied Einer Mutter' and 'Where Passion Becomes Sound' - 2006

Before and After the Fall, by Sandor Csoori, and Engravings Torn from Insomnia, by Olga Orozco, Mid-American Review - 2006

'Assaying the Sky' and 'A Guileless Moon, Whispering', Eclipse - 2006

'Farther Than Music' and 'A Body in Motion Can’t Ignore Time', Hotel Amerika - 2006

'Instruments to Accompany the Moon,' 'Terrified by the Presence of Clowns,' 'A Billboard Plastered with Hands,' and 'Snow Globes & Theories of Breakage', Whiskey Island Magazine - 2006

'This Innocent Arrangement' and 'A Tarantella of White & Wind', The Florida Review - 2006

A Kind of Restoration, Virginia Quarterly Review - 2006

The Beauty of Music Doesn’t Have to Be Human, Bellevue Literary Review - 2006

The Sky Might as Well Be a Priest, The Journal - 2006

'A Couple Flirts at a Public Masters’ Violin Lesson' and 'An Ode in Someone Else’s Voice', Third Coast - October, 2006

'The Snow’s Repertoire,' 'What This Fog Would Have Us Believe,' 'What the Sky Would Like to Claim,' 'Ruminations on a Sky Empty of Gulls,' and 'Music Out of a Fervent Wind', the kerf - October, 2006

The Precarious Rhetoric of Angels - 2005

'Confession off the Lake' and 'In a Diner, in Franklin, Pennsylvania' - 2005

'Confession off the Lake,' 'In a Diner in Franklin, Pennsylvania,' and 'The Amnesic Hysteria of the Sails' - 2005

Book of the Unbroken Days, by Philip Terman, Mid-American Review - 2005

'A Cargo That Costs All We Have' and 'Overcast Parking Lot Salsa', American Literary Review - 2005

Fish and Sin, Prairie Schooner - 2005

Music Left by Another, The Literary Review - 2005

The Burning Wheel Put Out by Its Own Turning, Willow Springs - 2005

The Only Sober Lover, Alaska Quarterly Review - 2005

To Sanctify the Flesh, Artful Dodge - 2005

A Sad Man Makes of the Moon an Absolution, Third Coast - October, 2005

I Sailed with Magellan, by Stuart Dybek, Mid-American Review - 2004

Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore, by Erika Meitner, Mid-American Review - 2004

Night Shift Belonging to Lorca, by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Mid-American Review - 2004

The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives, by Fleda Brown, Mid-American Review - 2004

To Give Ghosts the Finger, The Southern Review - 2004

'The Moon Between the Branches' and 'Curses and Blessings', Third Coast Spring - 2004

Figures We’re Meant to Believe In, Gulf Coast - 2004

Madness in the Form of Birds, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry - 2004

The Heart Treads Water and Hums, Flyway: A Literary Review - 2004

To Sing and Touch with the Body, Connecticut Review - 2004

Where Laughter Doesn’t Belong, RUNES - 2004

Local Visitations, by Stephen Dunn, Mid-American Review - 2003

Voice-Over, by Angie Estes, Mid-American Review - 2003

'An Occurrence of Grace at a Bartok Concert,' 'Riffs Thelonious Put Down,' 'Memory and Mozart,' and 'The Insistence of Water', The Missouri Review - 2003

'Evidence is Always a Matter of Interpretation' and 'A Country Song Where the Moon’s Lost', Prairie Schooner - 2003

Burning the World Clean, The Southern Review - 2003

Figures That Could Be Divine, Gulf Coast - 2003

Gene Study Shows Whales are Close Relatives of Hippos, Willow Springs - 2003

Inconsolable Ohio, Hotel Amerika - 2003

Late Night Alone with Monk, International Jazz Archives Journal - 2003

Not About Time or Ending, Iron Horse Literary Review - 2003

One Definition of Chance, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry - 2003

Soaked to the Skin and Singing, Calapooya - 2003

Stories Told in Inconstant Light, Alaska Quarterly Review - 2003

Swing Dancing in The Blind Pig, RUNES: A Review of Poetry - 2003

The Language Light Leaves on Us, Chariton Review - 2003

The Tyranny of Love and Hemlock, Flyway: A Literary Review - 2003

With a Darker Song, Ascent - 2003

Tired of Loss and Sin - 2002

Changeable Thunder, by David Baker, Mid-American Review - 2002

'Enough to Cave Cruelty In' and 'Hymns Not One of Us Would Risk', The Midday Moon - 2002

'Mostly Water, After All' and 'Enough to Cave Cruelty In', Moon Reader - 2002

A Question of Landscapes, Witness - 2002

Beings Who Make Hymns, Xanadu - 2002

Slow Dance with Hummingbirds in Erie, The Journal - 2002

Something to Count On, Shenandoah - 2002

The Precarious Rhetoric of Angels, Quarterly West - 2002

Tonight the Moon’s Made of Whale Song, The Greensboro Review - 2002

Greatest Hits, a chapbook of poetry - 2001

Still Life With Lemon and Oysters, by Mark Doty, Mid-American Review - 2001

'Animals Posed Severe,' 'Sacrifice,' and 'While His Body Sang', Witness - 2001

'With Enough Heat and a Good Wind' and 'Near Aneurysms of Soot', Alaska Quarterly Review - 2001

A Little Water, Served Up With Prayer, The Evansville Review - 2001

Accomplices, West Branch - 2001

Dancing in Miami, Oklahoma, Ascent - 2001

Something to Buy a Ticket For, The Paterson Literary Review - 2001

The Music of What’s Left, The Bellingham Review - 2001

The Nonsense of Bird Tongues, The Black Warrior Review - 2001

Treatise on the Meliorative Function of Ruin, Willow Springs - 2001

Waiting for Clearance, Hayden’s Ferry Review - 2001

Why They’re Called Ghosts, Slipstream - 2001

Different Hours, by Stephen Dunn, Mid-American Review - April, 2001

Attendant Ghosts - 2000

Walking Liberty, by James Haug, Mid-American Review - 2000

A Hosanna for the True Curve of the Body, Passages North - 2000

A Parable of Dust and Color, Beloit Poetry Journal - 2000

Anything but Indifference and Wolves, Willow Springs - 2000

Flying Northwest Over Missouri, The Texas Review - 2000

Her Naked Feet Sang Mozart, High Plains Literary Review - 2000

Just Under What We Call Landscape, High Plains Literary Review - 2000

Rumors in the Heart of the Pear, Flint Hills Review - 2000

Signs Garbled, Incoherent, Quarterly West - 2000

Smoke and Songs to Heal the Moon, Sonora Review - 2000

Storms That Laugh Bitter and Nostalgic, The Gettysburg Review - 2000

The Coroner’s Soliloquy, High Plains Literary Review - 2000

The Sleep of Wood in the Houses of Wrens, The Kenyon Review - 2000

The Sorrow and the Grace of Vultures, Notre Dame Review - 2000

The Thin Architecture of Longing, Prairie Schooner - 2000

This Gray Bluff of Salvation, Sonora Review - 2000

We Call It Hot Blood and Hum It, Beloit Poetry Journal - 2000

While We Chanted and the City Burned, Southern Poetry Review - 2000

A Startle of White, Sun Dog: The Southeast Review - 1999

What Gives Us Voice, New England Review - 1999

An Inside Job, Ascent - 1999

Faced With a Mosque in a Field of Wheat, Notre Dame Review - 1999

Forecasts of Loneliness and Storms, The Journal - 1999

How Futile a Thing Direction Is, Indiana Review - 1999

Not Even Light is Innocent Now, The Southern Review - 1999

Of Touch and Voice and Other Pleasures, LIT - 1999

Rivers Already Sing With Enough Despair, Indiana Review - 1999

The Lime and Dust of Disguises, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review - 1999

The Options of Memory are not Infinite, New Letters - 1999

The Sound of Cairo Itself, New Delta Review - 1999

What Passes Here for a River, The Laurel Review - 1999

Where Cement is Cracked, South Dakota Review - 1999

Darker Without the Herons, The Missouri Review - 1998

Even When Birds are Quiet, Willow Springs - 1998

Faith Isn’t in the Hands, Notre Dame Review - 1998

In Air Maddened by Insects and Strange Hymns, Alligator Juniper - 1998

Maybe Not Lost at All, but Forgiven, Gulf Coast - 1998

One of Weather’s Best Lies, Black Warrior Review - 1998

Prayer and the Pain of Backs, The Missouri Review - 1998

Proof of Angels in This World, The Literary Review - 1998

The Blood in the Wheat, New England Review - 1998

The Blurred Hand Holds More, New England Review - 1998

The Body of a Lover is Colloquial at Best, Willow Springs - 1998

The Logical Passion of Chopin, Explorations - 1998

The Motion of Wings and Water, Alaska Quarterly Review - 1998

The Witness of Water, Shenandoah - 1998

True North, The Missouri Review - 1998

Unidentified Woman With Horse, Quarterly West - 1998

Conditions and Kingdoms of the Heart, Denver Quarterly - 1997

Each Libretto a Curse, Flyway Literary Review - 1997

How I Walked With a Woman Across the Maumee, Flyway Literary Review - 1997

Of Lost Bodies and Love, Cimarron Review - 1997

Old Time Religion, Green Mountains Review - 1997

Something About Murder and Love, New Letters - 1997

The Blessing of Onions, American Literary Review - 1997

The Drama of the Human Body, Columbia - 1997

The Music Eggs Dance To, The Journal - 1997

The Pleasure of Touch, Green Mountains Review - 1997

Libretto for an Opera About Gold and Lust, Haydens Ferry Review - 1996

Of Light and Dark and Violins: A Diptych, New Delta Review - 1996

The Long Sting of Kisses, New Delta Review - 1996

The Passion of Radishes, Janus - 1996

The Urge to Speak, Connecticut Review - 1996

The Wren Warm in Her Palm, Puerto Del Sol - 1996

Under the Sad Weight of the Moon, Haydens Ferry Review - 1996

Without Eyes, Quarterly West - 1996

Animals Housed in the Pleasure of Flesh - 1995

Monkeys With Soul, Sun Dog: The Southeast Review - 1995

The Inevitable Beauty of Gravity, Denver Quarterly - 1995

The Possibility of Touch, Haydens Ferry Review - 1995

The Tongues of Water Birds, Flyway Literary Review - 1995

Where Rivers Come Together, The Literary Review - 1995

Crashes, Sun Dog: The Southeast Review - 1994

Finding Time, Quarterly West - 1994

Animals Housed in the Pleasure of Flesh, Kestrel - 1994

In the Stunned Body, Poets On: Healing - 1994

Local History, Cincinnati Poetry Review - 1994

Morning Visitation, Sonora Review - 1994

Terrorism of Weeds, This - 1994

The Hurt World Worth Having, Poets On: Forgetting - 1994

No More Nature, by Terry Wright, Cottonwood - 1993

Landscapes in the Country of Longing, High Plains Literary Review - 1993

Asking Forgiveness of the Ohio, Nexus - 1993

Dark Prophesies in a Night of Sleep and Bad Weather, Puerto Del Sol - 1993

Irrefutable Evidence, Southern Poetry Review - 1993

What Might Be Called Burning, The Southern Review - 1993

With Bread to Fill the Air, Cimarron Review - 1993

Love-in-Idleness: The Poetry of Roberto Zingarello, by John Bradley. [and] The 18,000-Ton Olympic Dream, by T. R. Hummer, Prairie Schooner - 1992

Storm Pattern, by Greg Pape, The Texas Review - 1992

The Widening Spell of the Leaves, by Larry Levis, High Plains Literary Review - 1992

William Goyen: A Study of the Shorter Fiction, by Reginald Gibbons, Mid-American Review - 1992

A Small Space so Filled with Grief, Tar River Poetry - 1992

An Egret in Flight, Sulphur River Literary Review - 1992

Local Anesthesia, The Literary Review - 1992

Naming the World as It Deserves, The Panhandler - 1992

The Fruit That Bears the Seed, Great River Review - 1992

The Language of Angels, High Plains Literary Review - 1992

The Worst We Can Do, The Literary Review - 1992

The Art of Needing - 1991

Keeping the World Going, The Ohio Review - 1991

Carbon Cycle, Black Warrior Review - 1991

House on Poplar Street, Cold Mountain Review - 1991

Letter Written in a World Gone White, Black River Review - 1991

Of Light, Moisture, and the Census of Birds, Mississippi Valley Review - 1991

Official Response to Rumors of Death Seen Walking in Some Spanish Country, Red Dirt - 1991

One Form Love Takes, The Texas Review - 1991

Snow Through Our Bodies, The Pikestaff Forum - 1991

Storms We Can’t Name, Oxford Magazine - 1991

The Art of Needing, Sulphur River Literary Review - 1991

The Reassurance of Soil, Puerto Del Sol - 1991

What Brings Us to Ourselves, Cold Mountain Review - 1991

Building the Cold From Memory, by Jack Driscoll, Mid-American Review - 1990

Country of Air, by Richard Jones, Cottonwood - 1990

Breaking the Surface, The Literary Review - 1990

Dark on Its Own, Permafrost - 1990

Redeeming Value, Poet Lore - 1990

Renditions of Men, River Wind - 1990

The Late News, Sulphur River Literary Review - 1990

The Persistence of Parakeets, Tar River Poetry - 1990

You Don’t Know What to Call This, Southern Poetry Review - 1990

Lower-Class Heresy, by T. R. Hummer, The Texas Review - 1989

A Geography of the Ohio, Tar River Poetry - 1989

Flesh Made Words, Apalachee Quarterly - 1989

For The Workers of Machinists Union, Local 765, Poetry East - 1989

Letter to Smith From Chicago, Poetry East - 1989

No Matter The Weather, The Kenyon Review - 1989

Open Between Us, Cottonwood - 1989

Songs I Know by Heart and Love, Black Warrior Review - 1989

Trusting Your Way Home, The Gettysburg Review - 1989

Glassworks, by David Wojahn, Prairie Schooner - 1988

Pilgrims, by Peter Makuck, Mid-American Review - 1988

The Theology of Doubt, by Scott Cairns, Black Warrior Review - 1988

The Articulated World: Some Words on the Nature of Poetry, Indiana Review - 1988

Diving Cold Into This Life, Cincinnati Poetry Review - 1988

Testament, Poets On: Escaping - 1988

Threatening Light, Cimarron Review - 1988

Foreseeable Futures, by William Matthews, Tar River Poetry - 1987

Local Time, by Stephen Dunn. [and] Sin, by Ai. [and] The Triumph of Achilles, by Louise Gluck, Mid-American Review - 1987

Acts of Erasure, Acts of Acceptance, Prairie Schooner - 1987

Conversation at a Late Hour, Cimarron Review - 1987

Dark Water Rising, Black Warrior Review - 1987

White Explosions, Tar River Poetry - 1987

Letters on Cezanne, by Rainer Marie Rilke, Black Warrior Review - 1986

Wild Gratitude, by Edward Hirsch, Mid-American Review - 1986

Winter Stars, by Larry Levis, Tar River Poetry - 1986

The Coming Together of Hands, Juggler’s World - 1986

By Instinct, Tar River Poetry - 1986

Exposure, Poets On: Deceptions - 1986

Fireflies, Indiana Review - 1986

Halley’s Comet, The Midwest Quarterly - 1986

How the Light Colored the Feathers, Poets On: Deceptions - 1986

Ice, Poets On: Deceptions - 1986

Release, The Texas Review - 1986

The Dream of a Language, The Midwest Quarterly - 1986

The Last Vision of Light, Prairie Schooner - 1986

Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, by Raymond Carver, Mid-American Review - 1985

Sleepwalking Into a Pool, Indiana Review - 1985

'Flat Stones' and 'Missing' - 1984

A Happy Childhood, by William Matthews, Mid-American Review - 1984

Fishing the Backwash, by Jack Driscoll, Mid-American Review - 1984

Jars, Naked Man - 1984

Artificial Lights, The Texas Review - 1984

Birds, Indiana Review - 1984

Father at the End of a Field, Cincinnati Poetry Review - 1984

Misleading, Tar River Poetry - 1984

Navigation Without Numbers, Mississippi Review - 1984

The Boats Knocking at Night, Cottonwood - 1984

The Dark Green Around the Nest, Permafrost - 1984

'Keep It' and 'Just Next Door' - 1983

City Dogs, Clifton - 1983

Lion Tamer, Clifton - 1983

Small & Warm, Cincinnati Poetry Review - 1983

The Ballet Dancer, AURA Literary Arts Review - 1983

To the Victor, Blue Buildings - 1983

In the Smoky Light - 1982

Burning All the Silences, Clifton - 1982

Portrait of the Executive as a Young Woman, Clifton - 1982

Relationships in Plastic Spoons, Clifton - 1982

The Jugglers, Clifton - 1982

The Tightrope Walker, Clifton - 1982

MFA, Creative Writing (Poetry), Bowling Green State University

BFA, Art Education, The University of Cincinnati

2019

Book - Invited Reading
What Light Becomes: The Turner Variations reading
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College

2016

Book - Invited Reading
Hermits in Our Own Flesh
Mr. Smith’s Coffee House
Sandusky, OH

March, 2016

Book - Invited Reading
Meditations Before the Windows Fail
Bowling Green State University

2015

Book - Invited Reading
Meditations Before the Windows Fail
Greensburg, PA

2015

Book - Invited Reading
Meditations Before the Windows Fail
Erie, PA

2015

Book - Invited Reading
Meditations Before the Windows Fail
Erie, PA

October 29, 2013

poetry reading
A Poetry Reading from Recent Books
Erie, PA

July 26, 2013

poetry reading
Co-Directors' 10th Anniversary Reading
Chautauqua, NY

2012

Book - Invited Reading
A Short Bestiary of Love and Madness
George Looney
Erie, PA

A public reading on the occasion of the publication of a new book of poetry

2012

Book - Invited Reading
Creative Writing faculty new releases reading
Reading at Penn State Behrend
Erie, PA