In
Sueño del Alma: Andalusian Sonnets
, Cat Woodward crafts a luminous tapestry of mystic and metaphysical poetry that captures the fierce, melancholic beauty of Andalusia. This sequence of sonnets explores "The Looking," the act of perceiving as a divine and transformative encounter, weaving a poetic language that evokes the grand, symbolic traditions of Rilke, Lorca, and Valéry. Each poem, steeped in rich, vivid imagery, traverses themes of time, fate, love, and death, inviting readers to experience the cycles of day and night, the masculine and feminine, and the dreams and destinies shaped by this gaze-filled land. The unique form of the Andalusian sonnet underscores the poems' otherworldly quality-each unrhymed stanza culminating in a resonant couplet, evoking both inevitability and transcendence. This is a work of poetic precision and symbolic depth, a testament to the enduring soul of Andalusia.