“In between the lines, there’s a lot of obscurity…”

Some books you set out to write; others simply happen. Looking Up: Poems from the National Cathedral Gargoyles definitely falls into the latter category—and this blustery week feels like a fine time to plug it again on this blog.

This 138-page paperback includes 53 poems accompanied by black-and-white photos of the gargoyles and grotesques that inspired them. The poems are steeped in medieval weirdness and hew to traditional forms, from sonnets, villanelles, and alliterative riddles to ghazals, rubaiyat, and Japanese tanka. I posted drafts of 51 of the poems on this blog from 2009 to 2012; there’s a clickable list of them here.

You can find Looking Up at your favorite online bookseller (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s) and among the gargoyliana the National Cathedral gift shop, or you can buy a copy directly from me; just send me an email. (Alas, there’s not yet an e-book, because I have scant time for the tedium of formatting poetry for the Kindle.)

Looking Up is tantalizingly close to turning a profit. Cathedral officials graciously agreed to let their publication-shy gargoyles show their faces in print; I’ve offered to donate 75 percent of the proceeds to their fund to repair damage from the 2011 earthquake.

Friends tell me I’m too reticent about promoting my own work, so here goes: If you buy just one book of medievalism-influenced, gargoyle-inspired neoformalist verse, let it be this one!

Thanks, also, to those of you who’ve already bought a copy. Whether you’re a new visitor to this blog or a longtime reader, I’m grateful for your interest and support.