With its mystical landscape and fiercely self-reliant citizenry, Vermont has inspired poets from its earliest days. This anthology of contemporary Vermont poets represents a wide range of accomplished voices— both young and old, both renowned and relatively unestablished. Their poems reverberate with what
W. H. Auden called “ memorable speech” in a wide variety of forms and subjects. While there is no such thing as a particular brand of Vermont poetry, the poems in this volume claim Vermont as their place of origin, bearing witness to the remarkably rich and ongoing legacy of the state’ s poetic tradition. In this third edition of Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry, we have added thirty-six new poets. In the four years since the last edition of Roads Taken was published in 2018, many accomplished emerging and established poets have either published books of poetry or moved to Vermont. The poems of the three-dozen new poets in this third edition not only complement their fellow Vermont poets with new vibrant and visionary voices, but testify to Vermont’ s ongoing poetic tradition as one of the richest in the country.
About the Author
A former Pulitzer finalist and winner of the Poets’ Prize, Sydney Lea served as founding editor of New England Review and was Vermont’ s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015. Chard deNiord is the author of seven books of poetry, co-founder and former program director of the New England College MFA Program in Poetry, a trustee of the Ruth Stone Trust, is Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Providence College. From 2015 to 2019 he served as Poet Laureate of Vermont.
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