Grotto Heaven

In this book, Jonathan Stalling extends to us his hospitality. Enter this grotto, this book of poems a haven & lodge for light & dark, made by Jonathan Stalling with an ethics of respect & reverence. Pen opens to penumbra, shadowing each word. This book constitutes an attentive reaching, reading, a leaning into language, so that learning an other language rhymes with listening to & learning the emerging language-scape of one's own child. In Stalling's book we are lodged here, in poems, in a place allowing passage back & forth from the mystery of "I" and "we" to the mysterious housings of words in our language and in others. Words, characters, & embodiments make up the constellations, the figured stars within a larger darkness. I recommend to you Grotto Heaven as a fine place to take up lodging. ---Hank Lazer

Since Pound first started reading Fenellosa and found a gateway into classical Chinese poetry, it has been the case that Chinese and American poetry have provided an answering music for one another. No poet has ever borne more material witness to this music than Jonathan Stalling, or sounded that music more fully. If "All gates are sacred", as Pound wrote in The Cantos, then the aperture Stalling provides in this book is currently our most dizzying threshold.---Leonard Schwartz