Moon Grammar

<p>In the opening poem of Matthew Porto's dazzling debut collection we hear the voice of the recurring angel figure for the first time commanding us to Get used to the light. That light-blinding mysterious unsettling but occasionally illuminating-shows up again and again in Porto's taut elegant poems. As he writes in another poem: Some light it's true makes it to us but always / refractory errant struggling to deign downward. </p><p> </p><p>The occasions for these poems range from encounters with ancient biblical and mythological tropes to fresh translations of elegiac Anglo-Saxon verse to sojourns from Texas to Taiwan and Vermont to Venice.</p><p> </p><p>Holding everything together-the themes of love and responsibility memory and forgetfulness loss and hope-is the grammar of the moon ever-changing yet ever-present. Here is a fully mature poetic voice one which former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky rightly hails as ingeniously alert compelling and unpredictable. </p>