Sydney Lea, founder and longtime editor of New England Review, was Vermont poet laureate from 2011-2015. A former Pulitzer finalist, he has published twelve volumes of poetry, most recently No Doubt the Nameless. Lea is also author of the novel A Place in Mind and four nonfiction titles, most recently What’s the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long. He recently chaired a successful campaign to conserve 400,000 acres of land in Maine.
Poetry
Winter 2012
To a Young Father
This riverbend must have always been lovely. Take the one-lane iron bridge shortcut across the town's west end and look downstream to where the water backs up by the falls. […]
Poetry
Summer/Fall 1999
Conspiracy Theory
—November 22 Through that Taft Hotel window, the local radio station’s neonized call lettersover the New Haven greennow had the alien look of shimmery desert, deep space, one’s oddest dream.First […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
Inviting the Moose: A Vision
Sumac thickets by the roadbed, either side, spangled by snow and the big moon’s light. Deeper in, evergreens, taller, darker, but still undark in that light, this weather. And deeper […]
Poetry
Spring 1990
The Hitchhiker
He speaks as if I knew him: "Mr. Troop will feed him. I'll be right back. He understands. See him roll over, shake hands. I like all my animals: now […]
Poetry
Autumn 1989
Six Sundays toward a Seventh (21 February-3 April, 1988)
If during meditation our thoughts move to persons who are near to us or to those we are concerned about, then let them linger there. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the […]
Poetry
Winter 1989
Spite: Her Tale
Someone else would tell a different version: There was a tree, a twisty beech, out back, no earthly use, not even for a shade. You know the way of a […]
Poetry
Spring 1987
Annual Report
For my wife What reason to begin and end just here –in May, the woods still rank with late gray snow through which the jets of adder’s-tongue will show before […]
Six Sundays toward a Seventh (21 February-3 April, 1988)
From the Kenyon Review, New Series, Autumn, 1989, Vol. XI, No. 4 If during meditation our thoughts move to persons who are near to us or to those we are […]