If fiction is "the lie that tells the truth," then David Lee's book of poems "My Town" is the ghost village that we all live in.
You'll never meet a man like Reverent Pastor Brother Strayhan, a preacher who swings his Bible so wide the ribbon lops the tops from nearby flowers. You'll have a hard time finding a Faith Tittle - a woman so heavy the doctor finds everything from false teeth to fur balls inside her when he operates. And as for Clovis Walker, well, Clovis isn't even one of a kind.You may never meet such folks. But, on the other hand, they are people you also meet everywhere every day. Like epic characters, they've been distorted into types. And those types show us exactly who we are.
Judges for the Western States Book Awards thought so when they awarded David Lee the 1995 WESTAF Award for Poetry.
Lee will receive the award and read from his collection from 5-6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 7, at the Art Barn, 54 Finch Lane. Call 533-5895 for details.
"This is a large honor for Dave," says Guy Lebeda, literary coordinator for the Utah Arts Council. "WESTAF didn't know it was creating a major force with the awards, but it has. The winning books are subjects of attention around the entire country now."
As for the poet, Lee heads the English department at Southern Utah University and spends a good deal of time on the road giving readings. His other books of verse, "Day's Work" and "The Porcine Canticles" among them, were also published by Copper Canyon Press and have become regional classics.
As for the town in "My Town," the place has more in common with his birthplace of Post, Texas, than Cedar City, Utah. Cyclones hover here and there, Mexican nationals are prominent, Baptist preachers thump their Bibles. It's a hardscrabble Texas town, though - like the inhabitants, you could never put your finger on the place. It's Brigadoon, Texas.
The only thing more elusive than his subjects, in fact, is Lee's style. His writing is a hybrid, a strange cross-breeding of the Old Farmer's Almanac with the high, literary conceits of the Old Masters.
No one in America does what he does.
And now, thanks to the Western States Book Award, more Americans will know that.