Gleeful Ghazals class with Donald Levering: April 26, 10 am - 3 pm

PRE-REGISTRATION REQUIRED:

https://www.poetryplayhouse.com/classes/p/gleeful-ghazals-with-donald-levering-april-26-10-3

In-person class at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse in Placitas, NM with Donald Levering

Saturday, April 26, 2025

10 am - 3 pm

$100, class limit 10 students

Born in Kansas City and raised there and in New York, former NEA Fellow Donald Levering has worked as a teacher on the Diné reservation, groundskeeper, and human services administrator. Among his recent honors are the Carve Poetry Contest Award, the Tor House Robinson Jeffers Prize, and the Literal Latté Prize. His 16th poetry book, Breaking Down Familiar, placed 2nd in the National Federation of Press Women Creative Verse contest. Garrison Keillor featured his work in a “Writer’s Almanac”  podcast. His poems have appeared in over 300 journals, including Beloit Poetry, Bloomsbury Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Hollins Critic, Midwest Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Poet & Critic, Poet Lore, Valparaiso Review, and Verse Daily. He lives in Santa Fe, where he conducts poetry craft workshops and volunteers as a US citizenship tutor and as a Kitchen Angels driver. He co-curates with Barbara Rockman the poetry reading series at HERE Gallery.

Water Color Ghazal    

Donald Levering                               

                                    “Last Light” by Susan List

Dusk on the lagoon like a burner’s gas lights.

A hermit’s quietude flickers in past light.

Magenta spreads through the gloaming firmament.

Love of nightfall’s spectrums surges in “Last Light.”

Twilight slides with earth’s rotation into shade.

Swallows, bats, and moths rise into vast night.

Trappings come unmoored, habitual views disperse.

Infinity glimpses scatter in Big Bang’s blast lights.

Loose photon jubilee, cumulus hosannas.

Memory, time, and distance merge in amassed light.

Eyes lift to the water color’s fontanelle of sky.

List stirs Donald’s past heartache with “Last Light.”