James Bertolino
"A Wedding Toast" from Ravenous Bliss was featured on Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry
Visit the Bertolino poetry archive at the Sayta Center
Read James' poem "Our Orcas Hours" on Verse Daily
James Bertolino’s poetry has received recognition through a Book-of-the-Month Club Poetry Fellowship, the Discovery Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two Quarterly Review of Literature book publication awards, the Connecticut College Contemporary American Poetry Archive and, in 2007, the Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize for Washington State Poets. His 27 poetry collections have been published by 21 presses in nine states, and Ravenous Bliss: New and Selected Love Poems is his twelfth full volume.
He has taught creative writing at Cornell University, University of Cincinnati, Washington State University, Western Washington University, the North Cascades Institute and, in 2006, retired from a position as Writerin- Residence at Willamette University in Oregon. 2018 is the ninth year he nominated books for the American Book Awards, sponsored by the Before Columbus Foundation in Berkeley.
He grew up in Wisconsin, and now lives on five rural acres near Bellingham, Washington with his multi-talented wife Anita K. Boyle, a dog and two cats.
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“Bertolino's new collection is a luminous offering of meditations and reflections. In Sun Rising into Storm, we discover that ordinary life, when observed through the lens of an exceptional poet, is filled with the radiance and tumult of dawn emerging to dispel the darkness of ominous skies. Masterfully wrought, these poems impart Bertolino's thoughts with an intimacy and generosity that gives the effect of being caught eavesdropping on his mind, only to be graciously invited in to listen."
—Rena Priest, American Book Award winning author of Patriarchy Blues and Washington State Poet Laureate
Poem from Sun Rising Into Storm
The Wave
Once again we learn order watching the legs of the centipede: such elegance—to make the precise move, to know when, and be convinced your motion is of the great wave of being.
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Poem from Ravenous Bliss
Asking
Please forgive me if I keep asking your name. Each moment builds a new universe and I need to find you there.
