A Legacy of Shadows

David Lee

A major retrospective of Utah’s Poet Laureate, who was branded by a PBS documentary as “The Pig Poet.” Pigs, and the gentle-hearted redneck roustabout John, feature prominently in Lee’s small-town universe, which is frequented by tragedy and near-tragedy, where transcendence most often arrives in the form of humor, whether ironic, self-deprecating, or ribald. Included are selections from Covenants, as well as the entirety of Driving and Drinking, The Porcine Legacy, The Porcine Canticles, Day’s Work, and My Town.

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ISBN: 9781556590979

Format: Paperback

Plowing

               1
All my life, broken ground.
Shovels. John Deere bangers. Sticks, cats, hoes.
Always forgotten people speak
old ways, lost ways, fossils.

I found an old plow,
bought leather straps, borrowed John’s
half-blind Dan     n goddammit boy
don let that sonnybitch kick ya he’s mean bastard
sed John, helped me with harness.

               2
My anticipations all misplaced,
early plowed under. Expected sun
and flesh, tracings and neck leaders,
mind drifting to Kolob’s breezes,
tired arms, hoarse throat.

Found wind, thick clods. John’s Dan
walked easy, followed his good eye
in straight lines. I moved, something habitual,
behind, stepping over turned earth,
shy at harness,
precariously balanced on one of the world’s edges,
wind against my hair
exploding into afternoon     god aint he sumin
that mule’s so old he carried Moses inta Jewsalem
and he aint forgot a goddam thang
wind and earth and animal
the only geometry.

               3
All my life I’ve heard death
takes us to the cycle’s center,
where we should be. Crystals,
clusters. We exist within, know
both sides at once. Perfect definition.

And that life is broken parabola.
We wander against wind, random circles,
no closer to center, glimpses,
shadows and edges     I caint tell ya how to do it boy
it’s gonna be there in ya bones or it aint shit for nowhere
the world inside. And I followed John’s mule,
my boots relaxed in stillness, shattered dust,

plowed earth, wind, sky.
And John walked beside, talked of hog markets,
hollow bones, lakebottoms and forgotten ways.
The moon swallowed dusk. Our image
crystallized against a backdrop of night.

About the Author

David Lee was Utah’s first poet laureate; in 2001 he was a finalist for United States Poet Laureate. He is the author of two dozen volumes of poetry, including The Porcine Canticles, A Legacy of Shadows, So Quietly the Earth, Last Call, and Mine Tailings. A former seminary student, semi-pro baseball player, and hog farmer, he holds a PhD with a concentration in John Milton. For over three decades he taught at Southern Utah University, where he received every teaching …

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Reviews

“Lee joins the ranks of Frost and Hayden Carruth as poets whose treatment of rural life in lines cast in genuine vernacular goes far beyond what we often mean by ‘regional poetry.'” —The Year in Poetry, 1999

“The subjects and treatment are as earthy, profane, raucous, and also as appealing, as those of Chaucer’s miller’s and Wife of Bath’s tales and, in contemporary literature, of Antoine’s rants in the wonderful New England rural poems of David Budbill’s Judevine.” —Booklist

“Lee is one of a kind, a narrative poet (most often) writing in vernacular (most often) who is good, very good.” —Open Books Newsletter