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Works by Sydney Lea |
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Poetry
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Searching the Drowned Man (1980)
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The Floating Candles (1982)
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No Sign (1987)
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Prayer for the Little City (1989)
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The Blaineville Testament (1991)
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Hunting the Whole Way Home (1994)
Emerson described the hunter as “commanded in nature by the living power which he feels to be there present.” The autobiographical essays in this elegiac collection convey that sense of living power, for Sydney Lea goes far beyond colorful accounts of tramping through Vermont woods following a gun dog's bell or a buck's trail. Hunting the Whole Way Home is a search for a personal philosophy or, as Robert Frost put it, a union of avocation and vocation, in which Lea explores the connection between his love for nature and his passion for writing. -
To the Bone: New and Selected Poems (1996) -- Co-winner, The Poets’ Prize, 1998
To the Bone gathers the best of Lea's five previous collections and adds a section of new poems, assembled here for the first time. Well known and highly praised for his brilliance in the long poetic forms, he reveals in the newest poems of this collection another Lea, equally proficient -- and magnificent -- in shorter forms. -
Pursuit of a Wound (2000 ) -- Finalist, 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
His latest work, Pursuit of a Wound, is marked by this acuity and by his uncanny ear for language as well as his willingness to speak for the unlucky and the dispossessed. -
A Little Wildness: Some Notes on Rambling (2005)
What does a good, long ramble in the woods reveal to us about our shared human condition? How do we gracefully shed our civilized layers of defensive behavior, our fear of discovery, of the unknown or once-known but forgotten? Award-winning poet and outdoorsman Sydney Lea vividly explores these issues in this compelling, refreshing and humorous memoir. -
Ghost Pain (2005)
"To say that Ghost Pain offers us glimpses of an 'examined life' would be too tepid. Lea's poems -- with their heavily freighted, measured talk -- enact a journey into and finally through self that is both unsparing and urgent. They give honesty back its good name by demonstrating that it must be hard won, achieved. It's a remarkable book, which takes his work to a new level." -- Stephen Dunn
Essays
Fiction
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A Place in Mind (1989)
"A Place in Mind carried me spinning up back eddies, drifting through the layered currents of this intensely moving account of northern water, distance, separation. It's full of brilliant images and strange poetic details, and the quality of writing is superb -- so good it hurts to read it.... A Place in Mind is a wonderful book." -- E. Annie Proulx -
Each Last Lake (In progress)
See also:
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Richard Eberhart: A Celebration (1987) by Jay Parine, Sydney Lea, Robin M. Barone
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Fiction, Flyfishing & the Search for Innocence (Sporting Life) (1994) by Annie Proulx, E. Annie Proulx, Mallory Burton, Nick Lyons, and Sydney Lea
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The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (1985) by Jay Parini, Robert Pack, and Sydney Lea, eds.