Like Utah itself, Utah's new poet laureate has quite a history.
A native of Matador, Texas, David Lee was a knuckle-ball pitcher, a divinity student, a Milton scholar and a pig farmer before turning to poetry and becoming a professor of English at Southern Utah University. Now, his decades in Paragonah and St. George have turned him into one of Utah's favorite sons.And along the route Lee has turned himself into one of the finest narrative voices in the West - so much so, in fact, that on Friday, Gov. Michael Leavitt named him to the laureate post - the first poet to be honored with the title. He will serve for five years.
"My wife knew about the appointment long before I did," Lee says. "She was acting so antsy around the house I thought we were having marital problems. When she told me the news, I was stunned."
Said Leavitt: "I've known Dave Lee for 25 years. My interest in his poetry goes back a long time. He brings back a memory of things I have seen, things I have felt and things I have heard."
Lee, head of the English department at SUU, also brings a full list of credentials to his tasks. He has won the Western States Book Award, numerous Utah Arts Council awards and published several collections of verse, including the regional classic "The Porcine Canticles" - a book that earned him the moniker "Pig Poet of Paragonah." He continues to wear the nickname with pride.
More recently, Lee's high-energy readings have brought him a ground swell of popularity and catapulted him into national prominence. At a time when "reading poetry" in America is giving way to "going to poetry readings," Lee's gift for dialect, comic timing and his camp-preacher delivery place him on the cutting edge of the newest trend in American verse. His "performances" show us American poetry's new frontier.
For such reasons, Lee's readings are always standing room only. His fans could hear him read the poems "Mean" and "For Jan With Love" a dozen times. Many of them have.
"When Dave Lee reads, you become immersed in the world he describes," says Sandy Anderson, director of the City Art Reading Series. "You can see the neighbors, hear them. I don't know if people really talk that way, but when Dave reads, you're convinced they do. He draws the biggest crowds we see at our readings."
If there's a downside to such popularity, it's that Lee's "Keillor-esque" style overshadows the writing. On the page, the poems may look like scripts for a sod-buster comedy, but his literary techniques and illusions are very subtle and sharp. He once built an entire book of "home-spun poems" on the same structure Dante used for "The Inferno."
Does it bother him that literary aspects get washed away in the oral presentations?
"Personally," he says, "I don't consider myself a performance poet. I don't bring a wash-tub out and do a rub-a-dub routine on stage. That sounds like `The Gong Show.' However, 25 years ago I didn't like the way poetry readings were being done. The poets would read, the audience would go `hmmmm' and not understand a thing. I believe that a poetry reading should be an event. Things should `cook' a little bit. When poetry gets too far away from the heart, it suffers.
"As for the literary aspects of my writing, I'm continually surprised by letters I get that perceive exactly what I'm trying to do and how I do it."
A couple of years ago Jon Smith of Cedar City did a PBS documentary on Lee called "The Pig Poet." The film is a Dave Lee Primer, with several notable Utah writers commenting on his work. Kenneth Brewer at Utah State University discusses the poet's "voice," Leslie Norris of Brigham Young University talks of the "Biblical world" that appears in his work.
But the most telling comment comes from Lee himself. He says he writes in order to turn his own life into myth.
Being named poet laureate for the state is the latest chapter of David Lee's personal Odyssey. Says Guy Lebeda, literary director of the Utah Arts Council:
"This first year we want to raise an awareness about poetry, and I know Dave will get us off to a flying start. He has fans among people who don't even read poetry. He may have the highest profile of any poet in the state. On top of that, he's very personable and willing to take any legitimate invitation - whether it's from a local high school or on a national level."
Lee takes the post very seriously.
"In many ways, I've been called to be an ambassador for poetry," he says. "I guess my job is to go out and spread the gospel of poetry. I'll get to proselyte a little bit, become a missionary for poetry. I like that."