About Me

My poetry, feature journalism and literary criticism have appeared in three collections and many periodicals or anthologies. For that I have numerous collaborators and supporters to thank, preeminently my life partner Nora Jean Bieler Levin. The list of what she, my family, and my teacher-inspirers have put up with on my behalf is too long to collect here.

The teachers may have been particularly tried. They range from an iconoclastic English teacher at Philadelphia's Central High School (Dr. Gerald Hamm), through my dissertation supervisor at Oxford (Merton Professor Nevill Coghill), to family members and professional colleagues who taught me much though they didn't realize they were teaching -- and who tolerated my mental absences when I was preoccupied with other things. Nevill Coghill holds a special place for his elegant patience, for being principal witness at our marriage in England, and for inviting me to serve as production manager for his Doctor Faustus starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor -- my only film credit. The poem Stone Steps is part of the tribute to him here.

Most of this work was written between and around a busy professional life that included two decades in federal government as an appellate lawyer and executive with EPA and other agencies, in the Carter White House, and as Congressional Fellow to Rep. Andrew Maguire (D-NJ) and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA). The busy part carried on through private practice at national or regional law firms. It has declined only slightly through my current activities as an environmental / transactions lawyer and solar energy developer.

I received honors degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School and an M.Litt. in English Language and Literature (concentration: theatre) from Oxford University, where I was a Penn Thouron Fellow for two years. These credentials are less important than the worlds they opened up. For that, for the generosity of the Thouron family, and for feedback from the Federal Poets group and other committed readers, I remain grateful.