Sydney Lea (2)

Recently I read and greatly enjoyed a book of essays called GROWING OLD IN POETRY, coauthored by poets Fleda Brown and Sydney Lea. I had already read a few other books by Brown, but Lea (a former NH poet laureate) was new to me, so I picked up this book, A NORTH COUNTRY LIFE, which Lea himself considers his most autobiographical work. And, once again, I have greatly enjoyed his stories. And they are 'stories,' because Lea seems most concerned here with preserving the tales he heard from old friends from the woods of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, most of them long gone now. Indeed, one of the essays here, "Living with the Stories," is simply a transcription of a 1993 tape recorded ramble by one of his woods mentors, Earl Bonness. In another piece he gives us "The Turkey Cure" for a dark period of depression he'd been experiencing. "Now Look" is a variously funny and deeply moving look at the very long marriage of Mattie and John, a union plagued by John's alcoholism. More than one piece recalls a "small yellow house" where Lea lived with his first wife, and the initially good times shared there, and it brought to mind the tiny college town apartment my wife and I shared when we were first married. "Ownership" is a heartfelt memory-filled elegy for John Engels, "dear friend and nonpareil poet of the trout stream." In "That Little Boy You're Holding" Lea considers an old photo of his late father holding him as a child, and reflects on his dad, who died too young, as did a brother.

Most of all, these essays are ones of loss, with remarks like the following, in "Refurbishment" -

"I miss Creston and his uncle George MacArthur, to whom my family grew so close that we called him uncle too; I miss the wonderful raconteur Earl Bonness; I miss shrewd Paul Hoar, the storekeeper-guide … I miss the days when Bea Bagley tended the post office, Bill White sold live bait and trained bird dogs, Glennister Brown ran the grader … Ada Chambers baked and sold her breads and pies out on Tough End, Hazel Rich tied exquisite streamer flies for the store, Eddie Brown - disabled by a logging accident - became a self-taught expert on the Passamaquoddy relics he constantly dug up."

Yes, I get it, Syd. We are both of an age when most of our heroes and mentors are gone - and we miss them. Truth be told, although I am not a hunter or fisherman, or a woodsman of any sort, I could relate to a lot of what Sydney Lea writes about here - the dogs he has loved, the old folks long gone, departed parents and brothers. And he also alludes often to books and writers he has known, read and been influenced by - Keats, Wordsworth, Wallace Stevens, Jack London and more - which are certainly things I understand, albeit in perhaps a simpler, layman's way. Hell, I could even relate to a favorite book of Syd's dad - Sheila Burnfords's THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY - which apparently Syd could not, calling himself "a certified book snob."

I suspect however, that i can relate to Lea's stories of his outdoor, north country life mostly because he also had a rich inner life, nurtured by books - the ones he read and the ones he wrote. I had to smile when, in "Turned Around," he said someone "described me as 'a man in the woods with his head full of books, and a man in books with his head full of the woods." That's probably it. Lea has been, all his life, an outdoorsman while I've always been an "indoorsman." But then there are the books, the writers. There we merge. There is some beautiful writing in this book. Thank you, Syd. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (plus d'informations)

As a lifelong lover of good books, and a geezer who is himself growing old in the company of many good books, I found GROWING OLD IN POETRY a pure pleasure to read. It is essentially a back and forth conversation between two former state poets laureate (Lea from Vermont, Brown from Delaware) on such diverse topics as books, music, food, sex, sickness, animals, children, and, of course, poetry. Fleda Brown I knew from a few of her earlier books - her memoir-in-essays, DRIVING WITH DVORAK, was my introduction to her work. I met Fleda briefly at a reading in Northport, MI, at Dog Ears Books, where I got a signed copy of her early poetry collection, THE WOMEN WHO LOVED ELVIS ALL THEIR LIVES, which so charmed me that I later read - and enjoyed - another collection, a bit weightier, NO NEED OF SYMPATHY. Sydney Lea's work I was not familiar with at all, but his half of this book has piqued my interest enough that I will certainly look him up.

The back and forth nature of the format here reminded me of another poets' collaboration I read about some years back - BRAIDED CREEK: A CONVERSATION IN POETRY - although I'm forced to confess I have not yet read that book, co-authored by the late Jim Harrison (a Michigan treasure), and former U.S. poet laureate, Ted Kooser. But I would be willing to bet that both Brown & Lea HAVE read that book, since references to both Harrison and Kooser pop up here and there. (Another Michigan writer, Jerry Dennis, shows up here too, and I have read a few of his books too. Indeed some of the subject matter here brought Jerry's work to mind even before he was mentioned.)

Although Lea reveals himself to be more of a "man's man" than I could ever claim to be, with his ruminations on his youthful hockey prowess ("Sports: Suicidal Beauty"), skills as a woodsman and hunter ("Preludes," "Books: What Will Suffice," and "Food: Wild Black Duck"), and his fearlessness (perhaps misplaced) with a chainsaw ("Illness: To Take a Flop), I did sense a kindred spirit in his love of jazz (Miles Davis, Milt Jackson and Cannonball Adderley) and how its improvisations can be akin to certain forms of poetry ("Music: I Recognize Thy Glory …"). I could also relate to his feelings of failure and missed chances in being a father ("Children: What's Normal? What's Better?"), because what father has not felt he could have done a better job with his kids?

In the "Books" section I was somewhat surprised to find that neither Brown nor Lea were really early lovers of books, although they do mention a few tomes that got them started. For Lea it was THE GOOD EARTH, THE YEARLING, and Ernest Thompson Seton's WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN - all books I devoured in my youth. Brown calls her childhood self a "lazy" reader who read and re-read THE BOXCAR CHILDREN, but not BLACK BEAUTY, instead "I was being a horse, galloping across the playground." She sampled the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, but only "some of them." It wasn't until college that books really became important to her and she began to consume the classics - Dickens, Camus, Tolstoy - and remembers, "One Christmas holiday, I read WAR AND PEACE, page by gloriously laborious page."

The "Illness" portion of their exchange also touched a familiar chord in me. Lea remembers a doctor's visit when his arm was badly burned as a child, and being attended to and tucked into "Mom and Dad's bed … in my parents' bedroom as the archetypal example of peace, comfort and protection." Brown remembers her mother "bringing me poached egg on toast, straightening my covers," and reading from Robert Louis Stevenson's A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES. Hey, me too, Fleda - same book. But my mom would bring me homemade eggnog and peeled, sliced apples. But yes to both of your recollections of childhood sick rooms - "peace, comfort, protection." With that kind of loving care, who wouldn't occasionally want "to take a flop "?

There's even a section on "Politics" here, and it seems the two poets and I are of like mind regarding what is happening in today's political arena. Fleda remembers her parents' politics from the era of "I Like Ike" and Adlai Stevenson. Me too. But enough said on that. (Why ruin my good mood?)

I could go on, but I don't want to spoil anything for other readers. Let me just say this: If you love books and good writing, you will love this book. I'll say it again - a pure pleasure. I loved every page of it. My highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (plus d'informations)