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3 Questions...

We pose three questions to authors with upcoming visits to the Norwich Bookstore. Their responses are posted on the Book Jam during the days leading up to their engagement. Our hope is that this exchange will offer insight into their work and will encourage readers to attend these special author events and read their books.

3 Questions with Sydney Lea

11/5/2019

1 Comment

 
We are pleased to present our latest “3 Questions”, this time featuring Sydney Lea.
Mr. Lea, a poet and a former Pulitzer finalist, founded and for thirteen years edited New England Review. He has been active in literacy efforts and conservation, especially in Maine, where the land trust he chaired until 2018 conserved nearly 400,000 acres of working forest.
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Mr. Lea will visit the Norwich Bookstore at 7 pm on Wednesday, November 13 to discuss Here, his thirteenth book of poetry and his twentieth book. 
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1.What three books have helped shape you into the writer you are today, and why?

Most important was Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, for showing that compelling poetry could be based on quotidian events and people.  I couldn’t choose a single Robert Frost book, but his fusing of formalist technique with an astonishing  rendition of common human speech remains exemplary. The last book on this list may seem a bit eccentric: Voss, by Australian novelist Patrick White, whose eye for detail simply grabbed me when I was starting as a poet. There are moments in my first book that are all but plagiaristic in this regard.  ​
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2.What author (living or dead) would you most like to have a cup of coffee with and why? 

That would be the novelist Anne Tyler, I suspect, because I believe I share with her a fascination with family values, to use a much-abused phrase, with the wide range of subjects implicit (I think of Wordsworth again) in everyday domesticity.

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3.What books are currently on your bedside table?

I keep re-reading my friend David Huddle’s new poetry collection– his best in my view– My Surly Heart. I also regard the short story as literature’s most challenging genre, one at which I have very rarely succeeded myself; my attraction reflects my poetry’s strong interest in narrative. At all events, I am re-reading the brilliant Lorrie Moore’s Bark. Wow. Talk about an original sensibility! I’m also re-reading the late Larry Brown’s Big Bad Love, which shows, these years after I first encountered it, a slight but disconcerting trace of sexism; but oh, the man could write!
1 Comment
Lawton Cabinets link
8/2/2022 04:24:56 am

This is awesome

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  • Book Reviews
  • Meet the Author
  • Book Groups
    • Young Adult & Kids
    • Non-Fiction
    • Fiction
  • About Us
    • A Short History
    • We Are What We Read
    • Get In Touch
    • SUBSCRIBE HERE
  • Search
    • Armchair Traveler
    • Belly Laughs
    • Closet Mystery Lovers
    • Fiction Fanatics
    • Food Lovers
    • Just the "Facts"
    • Kids at Heart
    • Must Read Memoirs
    • Perfect Gifts
    • Poetic Souls
    • Sports & Adventures
    • Search All