What Shines

ISBN: 1954245580

Author: Lea, Sydney

Condition: New

Retrospective of a long life and already inimitable career in poetry, Sydney Leas What Shines asserts and asks in equal measure. In older age, Lea affirms the luster of fruit long labored for: a resilient and happy marriage; the rewards of parenthood and, later, grandchildren; a profound intimacy with northern New England - the environment, the seasons, the people, home, time. But he also transmits the escalating urgency of answering the fundamental question: at this late hour, what light do we have to see by? What light will outlast us? In 1949, Lea revisits old photographs: one of his parents both grinning straight at the Kodak, / an elm, not yet blighted to death, at their backs, another of his mother standing beside a bucket of sunfish. With what Ive known, youd think thered be chapter on chapter, he says, everything habitual, familiar. Still he stumbles upon revelation, the visceral novelty of experience, and Leas brilliant shock glimmers in the golden hour. I shouldnt be, he disclaims, and yet somehow Im stunned: / Even the fish in that yellowed photo are young. Despite the accelerating onset of autumn, consolations line the path at the edge / of our late-shorn meadow, where there lie blackberries that should have vanished by now. And so what if a handful will not disarm winter? Though tiny and poor, it's sweet, / the fruit, even more so / than when I found more. If we receive this allotment of days once and only once, Leas consummate collection urges us to remember the spirit of the lyric itself: although we couldnt keep it all forever, when we had it, my God, so much of it was sweet.