The Lovely Sight of Ithaca: A Modest Volume of Poetry in Traditional Forms

Exploring the see-saw tension between frustration and faith, between the paralysis of despondency and the vitality of hope, between the inevitability of dread and the surges of joy, The Lovely Sight of Ithaca strives to document the travail in attempting to walk the “steep and narrow path” of a spiritual life. Though interspersed with occasional light verse, the poems of this volume speak heavily on love, loneliness, longing, despair, insanity, Divinity, serenity, and triumph. Written in traditional forms of versification—stanza, meter, rhyme—the attempt is made to rediscover and redeploy the heritage which centuries of English-language poets have drawn from to craft their art. The Lovely Sight of Ithaca details a soul’s journey—despite being delayed, blown off course, and faced with numerous obstacles—to find the way to his ultimate Home.

Michael Jamieson Williams is a poet and freelance writer who lives in Anchorage, Alaska. This volume is his first published work.