Sacred

These poems explore what is in the word 'sacred' for our world and what is in our world for the word 'sacred.' 'Sacred' points to a threshold or meeting place where the transcendent and the immanent pull together and are held somewhere. Finding that place and constituting it is the work of these poems. They range from original meditative lyrics to renewing modernizations of Shakespeare to meaningful children's poems. Some are allusive, reviving and revising the stories of ancient mythology, putting Ovidian characters in contact with Christian love. Others foreground figures from Christian Scripture, like Adam and Ruth. William's style is lucid, concise, and beautiful. The tone of the poems ranges from elegiac to fun and playful, but the effects are consistently poignant and profound.