The Golden Pilgrimage

Reading Steven Nightingale's sonnets is like sitting in the backyard on a warm waxing quarter moon summer night with a large glass of Vince Arroyo dark red zinfandel, a small fragrant nightwind soughing its way home through the cedar and live oaks, and a minor god's ransom of jeweled fireflies dancing, calling the stars to pop out and come play, one by one. --David Lee, Former Utah Poet Laureate

Golden Pilgrimage soars with lightness and song. The music coursing through this attractive book holds to an unbending certainty in the power of lyricism to render a world overflowing with splendor, ache, and awe. This book is a small astonishment. --Malcolm Margolin Founder, Heyday Books

There is a natural ecstatic in Steven Nightingale, whom one might situate on a scale somewhere between Emerson and Rumi. And there is also a craftsman with a jeweler's or watchmaker's meticulousness-who wants to make the sonnet mimic his wonder at the architecture of things. They are both very present in these sonnets, and they make a labor out of praise and a praise out of labor. --Robert Hass, Former U.S. Poet Laureate