Voices and Echoes

My new chapbook, Voices and Echoes, was published in October 2026 by Final Thursday Pres. It is the official sesquicentennial poem celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the University of Northern Iowa. The poem is actually comprised of several poems . . . a sonnet corona, 15 sonnets spoken by historical persons (mainly real, with a small handful of fictional character), ranging from a Civil War orphan to a current professor of chemistry, along with college presidents, faculty members, students, and other people, such as a WAVE who trained at the school during WWII. The sonnet corona is an interlocked poetic form, where each sonnet's last line returns as the first line of the next sonnet. At the end of the sequence, the ending line of the last sonnet hearkens back to the beginning line of the first sonnet, forming a circle, a crown (the form is also called a "crown of sonnets") where the jewels are the individual sonnets. After the corona was complete, Mark Nook, president of the university, as well as Jim O'Loughlin, publisher, asked me if a poem could be added featuring a child looking forward to going to UNI and a current first-year student. It was very difficult to incorporate this into the completed corona . . . the 15 sonnets were meant to represent, numerologically, the 150 years. To accomplish this, I composed an additional sonnet, a coda that features a sister and brother, she a current student and he a little brother planning to go to UNI when he's old enough. This addendum poem stands outside of the corona but echoes its spirit and subject. The covers to all of my poetry collections were created by my family members or by me. For this chapbook, my daughter Amelia Blue Gotera created the front and back covers. The image features floating leaves — oak and elm — to represent the oldest trees on campus, the Circle Elm and the Library Oak, both a hundred years old. Amelia also included on the back cover, the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home, the Civil War orphanage that became the college's first building, Central Hall. Great job, Amelia! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ