A Living Shakespeare

At the heart of A Living Shakespeare is the belief that contemporary poetry can bring us into an encounter with Shakespeare that has renewed vitality. Included here, with the full text of Shakespeare's sonnets, are Luke William's companion poems-written to clarify and illuminate the originals for modern readers in compelling new verse.

"To live on, the poems must bear progeny: they must find readers who make them part of their own hearts and minds and lives."
-Donald G. Marshall, from the Foreword

"Luke William invites us to journey with Shakespeare in a parallel sonnet sequence that skillfully weaves together imaginative translations with original riffs on time, beauty, love, death, and poetry itself. A Living Shakespeare is an energizing demonstration of the power of words in the past to continue to inspire words in the present. A pleasure to read."
-Steven Mailloux, Loyola Marymount University, emeritus

"A Living Shakespeare is literary intertextuality at its best-a poetic reminder that not only does the past affect the present, but the present, the past. Readers find that before turning each page, they have read Shakespeare's sonnet and William's corresponding sonnet back and forth many times, enjoying the delightful interplay of language and sense between the two poems and discovering both the temporal and the atemporal in the process."
-Mary Ann B. Miller, Caldwell University

"William's collection of his Shakespearean sonnets is wonderfully readable as love poetry-but also deeply absorbing as an exhibition of what it can mean to read Shakespeare. Pairing his own sonnets with Shakespeare's text, he impels us to trace the articulation and patterning of his private feelings, conveying his pleasure in finding his poetic self in the poetry of another. The desire of sharing one's feelings, normally difficult, comes to seem natural and lovely."
-Victoria Myers, Pepperdine University, emerita