We are all looking for secret labyrinths to enter. In The Beauty of Curved Space, Stephen Linsteadt writes with breathless attention of the female form, noting “the round fragrant ridges” and other ways “a rose captures the nightingale.” His enthusiastic language in his poems keeps pace with desire, as if he were on “a safari of untamed expectations.” But what I love about his honest appraisal of the human form is his playfulness, letting Rumi and Hafiz play on the same soccer field of his imagination.

~ Russell Thorburn, author of Salt and Blood