Book Review: Lisa Williams' "Woman Reading to the Sea"

Lisa Williams, Woman Reading To The Sea: poems, (W.W. Norton, 2008) 128 pages, poetry, $24.95 U.S,/$24.95 Canada.

This is a beautiful book, both inside and out. It is graced with a painting by Franco Mondini-Ruiz which served as inspiration for the title poem. The colors have a calming effect.

Lisa Williams' poems are much like the cover for them. They are deeply lyrical, meditative, and soothing. Williams emphasizes sound over form. There is much play in this collection with assonance and consonance. The overall effect of the collection is that of being softly rocked by the ocean. The book's four sections rush in and ebb out, climb high and then softly lower again. Williams manages this while tackling some weighty subjects, such as environmentalism and a uniquely feminine view of relationships, both with other people and with the world in general.

Perhaps the best work in the collection is contained in section three where Williams displays the fruits of her trip to Rome. It seems she spent at least some of the time touring Rome's innumerable churches and cathedrals. She then turned these experiences into poems. Williams professes no real belief in the worship she witnesses at these places. This results in a poetry completely detached from religious sentiment. We are thus given a strictly secular view of these monuments of history. Shy and a little awkward, Williams infuses in these poems all her literary strengths. It is clear that this section was a labor of love, perhaps her most substantial souvenir.

In choosing this collection for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, Joyce Carol Oates wrote, "Lisa Williams is a poet of lyric gifts blessed with a luminous intelligence and wit."

I had the pleasure of meeting Williams recently. She led a workshop at the 29th annual Kentucky Women Writers Conference in Lexington, KY. and also read from this book there. "Luminous intelligence and wit" is a fitting description of her personality. It is an understated luminosity, however, as she seemed to me to be humble, modest, and virtuously reserved. She read the poems with a measured cadence in a soft voice. This served to heighten the soothing, rocking sensation of the words. It was as if she herself became the woman reading to the sea.