Bücher der Reihe Poiema Poetry

You don't have to be a skilled poet to see yourself living In a Strange Land. The poets found in this collection, however, not only recognize it, but express their varying experiences in ways that bring us along with them. We see their experiences--whether similar to our own or completely different--and find their poems ringing true in beautiful, painful, amusing, and fascinating ways. None of these ten poets has previously had a full-length poetry collection of their own--yet--but they are certainly all worthy of that honor. Keep an eye out for these poets in literary journals, chapbooks, and new books over the next while.Contributing poets: Ryan Apple, Susan Cowger, Jen Stewart Fueston, Laura Reece Hogan, Burl Horniachek, Miho Nonaka, Debbie Sawczak, Bill Stadick, James Tughan, Mary Willis

The poems in Phases are as interested in the creeping penumbral edge of language as they are in the shadowy fact of faith. Playful experiments with form swing to the conceptual ring's apogee, while a colloquy across history and place center the proverbial orbit.

The Turning Aside is about stepping out of our routines--like Moses turning from tending sheep, like a certain man selling his everything to buy a field--to take time to consider the ways of God in the company of some of the finest poets of our time. Turn aside with such established poets as Wendell Berry, Les Murray, Luci Shaw, Elizabeth Jennings, Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, and Christian Wiman--and respond to their invitation for us to muse along with them. Walk with poets from various parts of the planet, even though some of them are less known, whose words have been carefully crafted to encourage us in our turning aside. The Turning Aside is a collection of Christian poetry from dozens of the most spiritually insightful poetic voices of recent years. It is a book I have long dreamed of compiling, and it has grown beyond my mere imagining in its fulfillment.

Description:These poems--selected from the award-winning poet''s output over four decades--more explicitly than any of his prior volumes address the centrality of Christian vision to his aims and aspirations. Lea looks unflinchingly at all that may challenge his faith: the cruelties of both natural and human worlds, the attractions of jolly, good-hearted secularism, the distortions of doctrinaire religiosity, the seeming pointlessness of untimely deaths; but his faith in Christian redemption shines through even the bleakest of his poems.Endorsements:""The life in Sydney Lea''s poems is entirely local, whether the locale is Italy, Montana, or his home in Vermont . . . The making of the soul that occurs in Sydney Lea''s poems is intimately connected with the place where the making occurs . . . Sydney Lea''s poems show us that all spirituality is local spirituality. He is our preeminent poet of the soul''s making among local places and people.""--Mark Jarman Author of Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems ""Sydney Lea''s heartbreaking and heartening poems look, with the utmost honesty, at ''what we may or may not be / here on earth.'' . . . [These] urgent poems give us back the depth of our existence. With intelligence, passion, and humility, Lea embraces the task he has been given: to record those ''warming recollections'' of parents, friends, wife and children, and to acknowledge how this ''splendid universe subsumes . . . his small dumb witness'' into a ''hymn of grateful praise.''"" --Robert Cording Author of Walking with Ruskin""In this book Sydney Lea invites us to take a spiritual journey . . . By the end of Six Sundays, the narrator and the reader step together into radiant light. What is so moving about Six Sundays is not only its wrestling with spiritual questions, but also Lea''s affirmation that life is a spiritual journey and that this journey is of paramount importance.""--Jeanne Murray WalkerAuthor of A Deed to the Light""From his experience of doubt to his affirmation of the Mystery, the poet''s faith shows through honest and eloquent language . . . Lea''s unique gift of language opens up the most ordinary detail of village life in northern Vermont and raises it to universal significance. His compassionate gaze at suffering and loss is balanced by his embrace of nature in all its forms and by moments of ecstatic revelation.""--Robert Siegel Author of A Pentecost of Finches: New and Selected PoemsAbout the Contributor(s):Sydney Lea lately retired after more than forty years of teaching at Dartmouth, Yale, Wesleyan, and Middlebury Colleges, as well as at several European universities. Lea was a Pulitzer finalist for his volume of poems Pursuit of a Wound, and won the 1998 Poets'' Prize. He holds the doctorate in Comparative Literature from Yale. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright Foundations, he founded and for thirteen years edited New England Review, one of the nation''s leading literary quarterlies. This is his tenth volume of poems; he is also author of a novel, A Place in Mind, and two collections of naturalist essays, Hunting the Whole Way Home and A Little Wildness. He is currently the poet laureate of the state of Vermont.

About the Contributor(s):Paul J. Willis is Professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. He has published two previous volumes of poetry, Visiting Home (2008) and Rosing from the Dead (2009), along with an essay collection, Bright Shoots of Everlastingness (2005), and a fantasy novel, The Alpine Tales (2010). Learn more about the author at pauljwillis.com.