Growing Old in Poetry: Two Poets, Two Lives

Green Writers Press

Sydney Lea and Fleda Brown, present and past poets laureates of their states and both nationally recognized writers who’ve given their lives to their art, have conspired to write an unusual book of essays. They’ve picked a wide variety of topics and headed out as they respectively wished with each, covering a lot of territory, both artistic and memoiristic. Some of the pieces, like “Wild Animals,” are downright silly; some, like “Sex, “Music,” and “Food,” are provocative; some, like “Clothes,” “Sports,” and “Houses,” appear ordinary but are ultimately revealing. The penultimate pair of essays fall under the rubric, “Becoming a Poet,” but actually, the whole collection is about Syd and Fleda as people-poets. Poet-people. Poetry never completely goes off-stage in this wide-ranging and exciting conversation between the two. And finally, each weighs in on how it feels to be a poet in this age, at this time. Have the people-poets had to change?