Sydney Lea

A Pulitzer finalist in poetry, Sydney Lea founded New England Review, was Vermont’s Poet Laureate, and received his state’s highest artistic distinction, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has published two novels (most recently Now Look), eight volumes of personal essays (most recently, Such Dancing as We Can), and sixteen poetry collections (most recently What Shines)His new and selected poems is due in 2026.

  • Two Poems

    Late afternoon, crows still at gossip
  • Sydney Lea: ROBERT FROST AND THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

    In his classic book on nature and art titled Memory and Landscape, Simon Schama examines "the connection between nature and symbolism", claiming that "memory is the landscape on which we write our recurrent obsessions".
    Plume Issue #160 December 2024
  • Sicily, 1992

    Etna’s lava shone against the gloom,
  • Seven Slovene Poets introduced by Sydney Lea

    For reasons there’s no need to explore, I have had a long literary and personal attachment to Slovenia
  • About Mending Walls…Sort of, by Sydney Lea

    The COVID-19 scourge has moved a horde of people to my home state,
    Issue #128 April 2022
  • Alone at 77 & I Arrive at the Scene

    Unhungry, he cracks a single egg.
  • Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea

    Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea   The editor of an online journal recently asked 25…

    Issue #108 August 2020
  • A Brief Portfolio: Five Poems

    I found this suitcase slumped in a dark attic corner
  • The Big Blow

    After the snow-soused April gale I wandered
  • Walking into Metaphor

    A few weeks back, while snow persisted, no matter it was April, I headed into the woods, in part
    Issue #95 July 2019
  • But-cept

    I recall not wanting my oldest son
  • Photographs, 1949 | Retiree

    In one, they pose, grinning straight at the Kodak,
  • Of Course

    If I wake at 3, ephemerality
  • OLD HUSBAND’S TALES

    I’m one who tells old husbands’ tales, not wives’,
  • Annie Fitch’s Duck Sauce

    I must be prepared to sit
  • Abbatoir Time

    The widower pushed the tailgate shut and fell.