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.

"This one’s a lucky pick: Rural Texas back when—memory filtered through the eloquent country vernacular and irreverent, bawdy imagination of David Lee, who can stretch the truth until delight shines straight through, unspool a nonstop sentence like a bad cat with a ball of yarn, see through the eyes of a woman just the same as a man, and hilariously take down hypocrisy and pretention, especially 'preaching, zeal maintenance and overlording.' (Full disclosure: love the guy, but then, read on and I bet you will too.)" —Eleanor Wilner, MacArthur Fellow, author, The Girl with Bees in Her Hair and Tourist in Hell

"Combine the sensibilities of a religious fundamentalist with a free-thinker and what you’ll likely get is an oxymoron, but burnish that with a poet and you get Lee, a writer who has been publishing memorable volumes since his 1974 classic, The Porcine Legacy . . . . Much of the pleasure in reading Lee’s poetry comes from his scrupulous attention to crafting each page for the ear and saturating his characters in broad washes of rural dialect, which he electrifies with humorous pronunciations and innuendo." —David Feela, Durango Telegraph

"Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans is a stunning social history of rural Texas, mid twentieth century or earlier. Most of it from a woman's perspective, a woman's voice. This is astonishing magic. This extraordinary poetry deserves to be celebrated, and loudly. If it were possible 'Today's Book of Poetry' would lead a David Lee march right into the ballroom of The Poetry Hall of Fame. How often do we get to call a living poet Great? Here's your chance." — Michael Dennis, michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca

"This book comes after a group of women from mid-20th century rural Texas spent a few years roaming around in Dave's head. During this time, Dave shared their arrival on the page each year at the Cliff Notes Writing Conference in Boulder, Utah, until they were ready to become this book. The women of this book will make you laugh, shake your head, blush and cry. Dave takes you to work, to the bedroom, to church, to the cemetery with these women. You can go an inch deep into the poems and be thoroughly entertained or you can spend years digging deeper into these poems and they just might drive you crazy" —Cheryl Cox, The Insider

"In his sixteenth book of poems, David Lee does something unique, while continuing to appeal to the big-hearted, the irreligious, and those with a funny bone... This is new terrain for Lee in some ways, but it is still him at his best. The swells of it, its risks, spot-on vernacular, humor, tenderness, and depth that calls forth Chaucer, Milton, Dante, and Greek tragedy will be familiar to readers of his previous work. It is both earthy and erudite. He is a magician, a weaver of poetry-tales unlike anything anyone else has written. It is a delight to once again share in his fine mind and heart." —Nancy Takacs, https://sugarhousereviews.blogspot.com/2018/11/bluebonnets-firewheels-and-brown-eyed.html

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.