Over the years, James Bertolino’s poetry has received national and regional recognition through a Book-of-the-Month Club Poetry Fellowship, the Discovery Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two of Princeton University’s Quarterly Review of Literature book publication awards, and the Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize for Washington State Poets.

His 12th volume of poems, Ravenous Bliss: New and Selected Love Poems, was published by MoonPath Press in 2014. His latest volume—Sun Rising Into Storm—was published in 2021 by MoonPath Press in Tillamook, Oregon.

In 2020, he was proud to have a poem chosen by a past Poet Laureate of the United States, Ted Kooser, for his nationally distributed American Life in Poetry column, which appears in 143 newspapers. The poem, "A Wedding Toast," has been read aloud for hundreds of weddings around the world.