Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans ─ Or, Poems New and Used from the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop

Few poets of Western America fill the ?organic intellectual” role better than David Lee. His poetry is the real deal when it comes to recording hilariously insightful (and linguistically accurate) observations of rural culture?and America at large?while using a host of astute literary allusions and techniques. Imagine Robert Frost simultaneously channeling Will Rogers and Ezra Pound. Imagine Chaucer with a twang. Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans is focused on the women of mid-20th century rural Texas: frontier survivors and the daughters of frontier survivors, indomitable women with tastes that run from Baptist preaching to bourbon-and-branchwater. No element of hypocrisy escapes the poet’s lethal attention. This is an authentic book of the mid 20th century based on actual characters, a paen to women who shaped and molded the poet’s life. It is in many ways a folkloric study of women in hard times: characters, survivors, intellects, harbingers, anonymous influencers. Utah’s first and longest serving Poet Laureate, Lee has received both the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award in Poetry and the Western States Book Award in Poetry.

David Lee was raised in West Texas, a background he has never completely escaped, despite his varied experiences as a seminary student, a boxer and semi-pro baseball player (the only white player to ever play for the Negro League Post Texas Blue Stars) known for his knuckleball, a hog farmer, and a decorated Army veteran. Along the way he earned a Ph.D., taught at various universities, and recently retired as the Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature at Southern Utah University. Lee was named Utah’s first Poet Laureate in 1997, and has received both the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award in Poetry and the Western States Book Award in Poetry. Lee received the Utah Governor’s Award for lifetime achievement in the arts and was listed among Utah’s top twelve writers of all time by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of twenty books of poetry. In 2004, So Quietly the Earth was selected for the New York Public Library’s annual ?Books to Remember” list. His latest is Last Call (Wings Press, 2014). In 2014, Lee was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Arcane Letters.