We soar. We go past history because

these ninety-nine sonnets want us, in

this life, within all life. The range is

expansive, Petrarch’s precise meter,

familiar and public, almost as if we

do have wings, angelic, earth-hued,

radiant. Here we find our call, our

meaning and dreaming. A 21st

century Neruda, a poet’s and people’s

masterpiece.

--Juan Felipe Herrera,

Poet Laureate of California

Steven Nightingale’s love for the

sonnet has turned it molten, supple,

fashioned it newly for new purposes.

He opens a peacock’s tail of nature

and human nature in the “strange

initiatives” of these marvelous

poems, makes them into Bhakti

sonnets, truly devotional literature

--Poetry Flash

Beauty, Soul, World, these words—

common as bread yet lustrous,

mysterious, weave through the aptly

named Steven Nightingale’s lovely,

soulful, and world-rich collection of

sonnets.

--Suzanne Lummis, Director

The Los Angeles Poetry Festival