{"id":2305,"date":"2013-08-21T19:17:34","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T19:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=2305"},"modified":"2022-11-10T13:22:35","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T18:22:35","slug":"i-was-thinking-of-beauty","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/i-was-thinking-of-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"I Was Thinking of Beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″]\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

paper \u2022 76 pages \u2022 15.95
\nISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-935536-31-4<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a>
\n[\/column]
\n[column col=”3\/4″]<\/p>\n

I Was Thinking of Beauty<\/em><\/h1>\n

Sydney Lea<\/h2>\n

It’s been said about conservationist and Vermont Poet Laureate Sydney Lea that \u201cthis extraordinary poet finds an elegance and beauty that can be glimpsed throughout his often harsh landscape.\u201d\u00a0I Was Thinking of Beauty<\/i>, his eleventh collection of poems, evidences that skill. Here the natural world coexists with the poet\u2019s boundless intellect. \u201cThe skins of maple florets have burst,\u201d Lea begins, and we are immediately pulled into a lush landscape of the \u201ccornsilk\u2019s yellow, roof-metal bleeding orange, \/ red granite gate posts, glints of mica in fieldstone.\u201d Still, Lea continues to remind us that even the \u201cfirst green that Frost called gold\u201d couldn\u2019t stay.<\/p>\n

In this collection, we follow a speaker who no longer feels he can \u201cdistinguish regret from knowledge, \/ accountability from sorrow,\u201d as he wades through the layers of memory and experience: \u201cI was thinking of beauty then, how it\u2019s faced grief since the day \/ that somebody named it.\u201d Lea\u2019s keen narrative eye keeps us fully in the present as he reminisces on a past\u2014which Lea unravels, chisels away at in search of a deeper understanding\u2014so vivid it could be our own.<\/p>\n

“Peaceable Kingdom,” from I Was Thinking of Beauty<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Doesn't everyone dream of heaven?\nAfter quarrel, he wishes his own could land at his feet.\nHe's on foot. As he passes the round Shaker barn on Route 7,\nOn an April afternoon of what's called unseasonable heat<\/em>,\nHis eyes alight on two ravens, crisp contours obscured\nBy the asphalt's shimmer. They gorge on flattened hare,\nWinter pallor vanished but for some streaks in the clotted fur. \n\nIn heaven, he reasons, there is no loss,\nNo accident, everything knows its way.\nThe carnivores lie down with the herbivores. \nIt's a famous claim. By extension, no snowshoe hare ever strays\nInto traffic--or if it does, it rises--and raptors\nFeed on seeds, and a wife and husband never\nBattle, and Pharaoh's armies all have drowned long since, each soldier\n\nRolling up and back in the ocean's rote, \nHis eyes rimmed innocent white with salt.<\/pre>\n
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\nAbout the Author<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 76 pages \u2022 15.95 ISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-935536-31-4 Add to Cart [\/column] [column col=”3\/4″] I Was Thinking of Beauty Sydney Lea It’s been said about conservationist and Vermont Poet Laureate Sydney Lea that \u201cthis extraordinary poet finds an elegance and beauty that can be glimpsed throughout his often harsh landscape.\u201d\u00a0I Was Thinking of Beauty, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2305","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18542,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2305\/revisions\/18542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}