[New-Poetry] Sydney Lea

[Anny Ballardini]

Unrelated to the main topic, but to the "nightmarish series of comps"
that last year ended with a sciatica for me. Here is my wish that everything
went well to you,

Anny

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:21 AM, Jeff Newberry <jeff.newberry at gmail.com>wrote:

> I've been rereading Sydney Lea's *To the Bone* this afternoon, savoring a
> few moments to myself following a nightmarish series of comprehensive exams
> for my Ph.D.
>
> Lea's not been on my radar in a long time.  Several years ago, I drank the
> New Formalist kool aid and went through a stage calling myself a "New
> Narrative" poet.  You'll forgive that indulgence, I hope, as I've forgiven
> myself.  Anyway, it was then that I first encountered Lea; I read his *Blainville
> Testament*, a longish narrative poem about . . . revenge, I think.  He
> didn't do much for me, then, but rereading him, I am finding some real gems
> in his shorter, more lyric pieces.
>
> What's fascinating to me, though, about Lea's work is that his poetry is
> less narrative and more *about* narrative.  The opening poem in *To the
> Bone* recounts the story of a man who's cut his leg with a saw while
> chopping some wood for an indigant neighbor.  The poem is a long, lyrical
> mediation on what undergirds narrative.  The speaker moves from memory to
> memory, images joining with other images to form a quilted narrative-lyric
> poem.  "To the Bone" (the poem) addresses what makes narrative: how
> narrative functions, and especially how narrative makes meaning.  It's a
> pretty fantastifc poem, methinks, even if is "Iowa Plainlay" . . .
>
> I *think* that Lea may be more well known for his experiments with the (for
> lack of a better word) *long* poem, but I am a big fan of these
> lyrical/narrative experiments.
>
> What's he up to these days?  *To the Bone* is old; 1996 is the publication
> date.  I wonder what he's been up to in the decade that's followed.  Anyone
> know?  Any thoughts on his poetry?
>
> Best,
> Jeff Newberry
>
>
> --
> You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and
> that is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and
> experience, from which each according to his own immediate and peculiar
> needs may drawn his own conclusion. --W.H. Auden
>
>
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>


-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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