Sydney Lea is the author of the poetry collections Searching the Drowned Man (1980), The Floating Candles (1982), No Sign (1987), Prayer for the Little City (1991), Pursuit of a Wound (2000), Ghost Pain (2005), Young of the Year (2011), I Was Thinking of Beauty (2013), and No Doubt the Nameless (2016); his collection To the Bone: New and Selected Poems was co-winner of the 1998 Poets’ Prize. He is also the author of the novel A Place in Mind (1989).
Often employing narrative techniques, Lea’s poetry is marked by a deft portrayal of characters and the natural world. Thomas Swiss, reviewing Searching the Drowned Man in the Sewanee Review, remarked: “Epiphany evolves (…) from a complex blending of abstract statement and the poet’s attentiveness to physical detail. Even in long passages of description the reader hears Lea’s voice affirming the deep connection between human life and the natural world.” In the Hudson Review, R.S. Gwynn observed: “the ability to create believable regional voices and have them tell compelling tales has always been one of Lea’s great strengths.”
Active in the areas of conservation, Lea has written nonfiction about the natural world and hunting, including the books Hunting the Whole Way Home (1994), A Little Wildness: Some Notes on Rambling (2006), and A North Country Life: Tales of Woodsmen, Waters, and Wildlife (2013)
Lea founded the New England Review in 1977 and was editor until 1989. He has taught at Yale University, Dartmouth College, Middlebury College, and Wesleyan University. A recipient of a Fulbright Award and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation, Lea was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Pursuit of a Wound. He lives in Vermont, where he was named the state's 2011 Poet Laureate.
With its mystical landscape and fiercely self-reliant citizenry, Vermont has inspired poets from its earliest days. This anthology of contemporary Vermont poets represents a wide range of accomplished voices— both young and old, both renowned and relatively unestablished. Their poems reverberate with what
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What’s the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long is, in many ways, a kaleidoscopic chronicle of this ongoing search.
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Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-USJAX-NONE Sydney Lea and Fleda Brown, past poets laureate of their respective states and both nationally recognized writers who’ve given their lives to their art, have conspired to write an unusual book of essays. They’ve picked a wide variety of topics and headed out as they wished with each, covering a lot of territory, both artistic and memoiristic. Some of the pieces
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It's been said about Lea that “this extraordinary poet finds an elegance and beauty that can be glimpsed throughout his often harsh landscape.” This new collection evidences that skill. Here the natural world coexists with the poet’s boundless intellect.
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"Singer of stories, lyric raconteur, Sydney Lea has evolved--through a long, rich career--into one of America's most harrowing and honest poets. Ghost Pain is his most eloquent and wrenching book."--T.R. Hummer
"Ghost Pain is a remarkable book, which takes his work to a new level."--Stephen Dunn