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Beautiful language is essence of Centre poet's book

Reviewed by Candace Chaney Contributing Critic

Woman Reading to the SeaBy Lisa WilliamsW.W. Norton. $13.95 paperback. 128 pp.

When Joyce Carol Oates selected the winner of the 2007 Barnard Women Poets Prize, she chose a poet whose work exudes "arresting intelligence, precision and beauty."

That poet is Lisa Williams, an associate professor of English and director of creative writing at Centre College. Williams' second collection of poems, Woman Reading to the Sea, garnered not only critical acclaim from the likes of Gregory Orr and John Hollander, but enough public response that publisher W.W. Norton recently issued a paperback reprint.

Divided into four loosely thematic subsections, Woman Reading to the Sea is a haunting, lyrical invitation to ruminate on the kaleidoscope of human feelings and experiences inherent in our shifting, complex relationships with nature, the cosmos, metaphysics, childhood, romantic love and our private, interior lives.

Williams paints a broad landscape of psycho-spiritual reflection, drawing heavily from external sources: paintings, classical poems, architecture and Western mythologies.

The volume opens with a section of self-reflective poems, including the title piece, inspired by a painting by Franco Mondini-Ruiz. Another poem, Laurel, was inspired by Bernini's Apollo and Daphne. Later, a Milton verse from Paradise Lost starts the second section of the book, Hadean Time, which focuses on the natural world, often drawing uncanny connections to human life and emotions.

For instance, the sense of ancient loneliness and drifting in the poem The Iceberg is strikingly evocative. Although no human appears in the poem, the emotion of listless drifting, of entrapment by nature (the poem is about a stone stuck in an iceberg for centuries, until it is finally loosed), of vast and unyielding cold as a defining experience makes it one of the most hauntingly effective pieces in the collection.

Later works include a series of poems inspired by European cathedrals (few of which invoke a literal deity, all of which invoke a sense of sacred discovery) and direct homages to mythological gods Io and Hades, among others.

The multitude of themes and inspirations might threaten a less-accomplished poet's sense of cohesion and flow. After all, Williams expects the reader to shift seamlessly from quiet, introspective dialogues with nature to ruminations in ancient cathedrals to the modern rite of passage of a girl's first junior high school dance. On first glance at the table of contents, it is easy to wonder just how all of these elements are unified. In what way is this grouping of poems "collected"?

The answer is language.

Williams makes no apologies about making beautiful words go beautifully together. Her language curls and slinks along the page, as seductive and melodic as it is self-contained and purposeful. She is able to craft lines like, "Things broken and molten tumbled/ uncontrollably collided with the stars'/ lost pillars at varying speeds," but she never veers into ornamentation, maintaining a clear, consistent command of tone and style throughout the volume.

Perhaps even more enjoyable than Williams' craftsmanship is her imagination and the boldness with which she embraces innovative ideas. For instance, the poem Helioseismology is about "the study of acoustic oscillations that make the sun ring like a bell." Think of the richness of that image — the sun ringing like a bell. Williams takes the image further in its last lines:

I can't — listening — see

being struck in the dumb

middle dust of the gong-haunted

unsettled chamber

between your last clang

and the vibrating dome.