Inlandia Institute, April 2024
Winner of the 2022 Hillary Gravendyk National Prize
Somewhere in lyric poetry’s once upon a time, long ago—Sappho teaches the alphabet’s songs on the nature of Love. Will Barnes is a student in that school, tracing the myths, memorizing the fragments, learning by rote the earthly declensions. The seminar is Socratic, as you’ll hear—a gentle call and response that turns answers back into questions, and questions back into wonder— “I’ve seen the deer by the creekbank rise / like wind and flame upward together.” In the old grammar, I want to believe, that to see is also to be seized. Ask Actaeon about the nature of vision. Artemis is the moon-star-bird of dearest love, bathing, even now, in the heart’s deep woods—no better guide than the artemisia to share a glimpse, and teach us how to suffer, gladly, the consequence.
—Dan Beachy-Quick, author of Arrows
William S. Barnes 