Sydney Lea, a founding Editor of NER, has published a new poetry collection. From Four Way Books: “It’s been said about conservationist and Vermont Poet Laureate Sydney Lea that ‘this extraordinary poet finds an elegance and beauty that can be glimpsed throughout his often harsh landscape.’ I Was Thinking of Beauty, his eleventh collection of poems, evidences that skill. In this collection, we follow a speaker who no longer feels he can ‘distinguish regret from knowledge, / accountability from sorrow,’ as he wades through the layers of memory and experience: ‘I was thinking of beauty then, how it’s faced grief since the day / that somebody named it.’ Lea’s keen narrative eye keeps us fully in the present as he reminisces on a past—which Lea unravels, chisels away at in search of a deeper understanding—so vivid it could be our own.”

Sydney Lea is the co-founder of New England Review and has appeared numerous times in NER, most recently in its current issue, 33.4.

I Was Thinking of Beauty is available at Four Way Books and other booksellers.