Author of "Leviathan, rising" David C. Kopaska-Merkel offers a look at the ancient legend and its modern interpretations and gives a peek into how it inspired the previously published poem.
 

     Leviathan is one of a class of sea monsters important in many religions originating in and near the Middle East, including Judaism and Christianity. Check out < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan > for more information about that.

     But Leviathan is no longer just a religious symbol or historical reference. In pop culture Leviathan refers to a mysterious, powerful, and inimical marine monster, either literally or metaphorically. The island that is a giant fish that swallows people and ships in the popular movie "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" comes to mind. Here Terry Gilliam mixed bits of several different Leviathan myths.

    Leviathan has also come to be seen as a symbol of chaos or as a force for chaos. It is in the pop-culture sense that I used the name in the poem. But I didn't actually use Leviathan in the poem. Instead, I simply referred to it in the title, expecting that members of our society would immediately think of whatever they remembered about the biblical creature. I wanted that to set the stage for the poem itself.