To the Bone

Co-winner of the 1998 Poet's Prize Long known as a master narrative poet, Sydney Lea combines a sure lyrical ear with a storyteller's eye for plot, character, and physical detail. His poems, according to Stanley Plumly, ''live at the level at which lyricism is crowded with the daily lives of those who will not or cannot speak for themselves--the doomed, the disenfranchised, the local dead. At his most vocal, his love ethic is indistinguishable from his elegy. He embraces what he cannot change.'' To the Bone gathers the best of Lea's four previous collections, extending his range both formally and visionarily and creating a book that is accessible not only to fellow poets and specialists but to a general audience as well. The title poem, a strong and uplifting tour de force, is astonishing in its emotional and spiritual breadth.