Poems contemplate our place in nature, the mystery of death, the importance of poetry, and the meaning of human relationships

FLOATING CANDLES: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Lea, Sydney

History & Criticism

University of Illinois Press

Poems contemplate our place in nature, the mystery of death, the importance of poetry, and the meaning of human relationships

FLOATING CANDLES

To the Bone: New and Selected Poems (Illinois Poetry Series)

Poetry

Pursuit of a Wound: POEMS (Illinois Poetry Series)

Co-winner of the prestigious Poets' Prize for his collection "To the Bone", Sydney Lea is known for his mastery of the narrative style and his clear and unwavering vision of the natural world and humanity's place in it. 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. Delving in equal measure into the flinty northern New England landscape and the exiled souls of ordinary people, "Pursuit of a Wound" moves beyond Lea's previous work to explore new poetic strategies, including some that approach prose poetry. Combining a free-ranging sensibility akin to Whitman's with a keen attention to verse's formal possibilities, this collection of twenty-eight new poems evokes a beautiful and threatened place and ratifies Lea's status as heir-apparent to Robert Frost.

Pursuit of a Wound: Poems (Illinois Poetry Series)

This is the first comprehensive study in the English language of the commentaries of Didymus the Blind, who was revered as the foremost Christian scholar of the fourth century and an influential spiritual director of ascetics. The writings of Didymus were censored and destroyed due to his posthumous condemnation for heresy. This study recovers the uncensored voice of Didymus through the commentaries among the Tura papyri, a massive set of documents discovered in an Egyptian quarry in 1941. This neglected corpus offers an unprecedented glimpse into the internal workings of a Christian philosophical academy in the most vibrant and tumultuous cultural center of late antiquity. By exploring the social context of Christian instruction in the competitive environment of fourth-century Alexandria, Richard A. Layton elucidates the political implications of biblical interpretation. Through detailed analysis of the commentaries on Psalms, Job, and Genesis, the author charts a profound tectonic shift in moral imagination as classical ethical vocabulary becomes indissolubly bound to biblical narrative. Attending to the complex interactions of political competition and intellectual inquiry, this study makes a unique contribution to the cultural history of late antiquity.

To the Bone: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Illinois Poetry (Paperback))

Co-winner of the prestigious Poets' Prize for his collection To the Bone, Sydney Lea is known for his mastery of the narrative style and his clear and unwavering vision of the natural world and humanity's place in it. 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. Delving in equal measure into the flinty northern New England landscape and the exiled souls of ordinary people, Pursuit of a Wound moves beyond Lea's previous work to explore new poetic strategies, including some that approach prose poetry. Combining a free-ranging sensibility akin to Whitman's with a keen attention to verse's formal possibilities, this collection of twenty-eight new poems evokes a beautiful and threatened place and ratifies Lea's status as heir-apparent to Robert Frost.

A Hundred Himalayas: Essays on Life and Literature (Writers On Writing)

In A Hundred Himalayas, Sydney Lea has collected a group of essays written over 30 years, representing what he refers to as the persistence of preoccupations and the absence of theory---a group of speculations, each one a single Himalaya, together a great elevation achieved in small increments. His musings on his own "favored genius," Robert Frost, his own approach to literary criticism, imagination, the American nature essay, rural life, the process of writing a poem, and fitting writing into everyday life all combine to create a picture of the things that interest Lea. "If there is grandeur at all in this volume," he says, "then, it must come in small increments." All of his small increments of gentle and insightful writing combine to create a collection that is, indeed, grand.

Essays & Correspondence

University of Michigan Press

In A Hundred Himalayas, Sydney Lea has collected a group of essays written over 30 years, representing what he refers to as the persistence of preoccupations and the absence of theory---a group of speculations, each one a single Himalaya, together a great elevation achieved in small increments. His musings on his own "favored genius," Robert Frost, his own approach to literary criticism, imagination, the American nature essay, rural life, the process of writing a poem, and fitting writing into everyday life all combine to create a picture of the things that interest Lea. "If there is grandeur at all in this volume," he says, "then, it must come in small increments." All of his small increments of gentle and insightful writing combine to create a collection that is, indeed, grand.

Brant Healey purchases a house in Maine and befriends the caretaker, Louis, with whom he shares a love of fishing, hunting, and the Maine outdoors

A Place in Mind

Scribner

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. Lea explores the connections between his love for nature and his passion for writing. As Lea describes a world of grouse and Canada geese and trout and deer, he defends the hunt as primal and rejuvenative. He decries equally animal rights sentimentalists, the cruelties of slob hunters, and the "morally idiotic yap" of the NRA. His rationale for hunting is simple: "When I say I love the wild animals in a given ecosystem, I begin by acknowledging the plain fact that each must stand in relation to the others as predator or prey." That understanding, Lea says, emphasizes the otherness of wild animals and inspires true respect. Lea perceives a bond with those who share that respect: the generations of people who have hunted and loved nature as he does. The natural world gives him a clear view of the relation of child to parent and parent to child, of past to present, and the fragility of life. Pain awareness of that fragility colors his newest book and guides his ongoing struggle to make sense of a life for himself, and perhaps for others.

Hunting the Whole Way Home

Univ Pr of New England

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Books by Lea, Sydney

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lea, Sydney. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

FLOATING CANDLES: Poems

FLOATING CANDLES

To the Bone: New and Selected Poems (Illinois Poetry Series)

Pursuit of a Wound: Poems (Illinois Poetry Series)

To the Bone: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Illinois Poetry (Paperback))

Pursuit of a Wound: POEMS (Illinois Poetry Series)

A Hundred Himalayas: Essays on Life and Literature (Writers On Writing)

A Hundred Himalayas: Essays on Life and Literature (Writers On Writing)

A Place in Mind

Hunting the Whole Way Home