To celebrate Homecoming for 2020 we welcome back a much beloved professor David Lee, who won every teaching award possible during his time at SUU. He was Utah’s 1st Poet Laureate, and in this discussion with host Lynn Vartan, David shares his concepts of voice in writing as well as past and future projects and adventures. Enjoy!
[00:00:00] Hey, everyone, this is Lynn Vartan, and you are listening to the A.P.E.X Hour on KSUU Thunder 91.1. In this show you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over, learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentations on stage. We will also give you some new music to listen to and hope to turn you on to some new sounds and new genres. You can find us here every Thursday at 3 p.m. or on the web at suu.edu/apex. But for now, welcome to this week's show here on Thunder 91.1.
[00:00:45] All right, everyone, well, welcome to the APEX Hour. It is September 24th, 2020, and it is homecoming week here at Southern Utah University and the beginning of the APEX Events season. So to kick off our live APEX Hours and our APEX Events this year, we've been celebrating alumni, but with a twist this year. Typically, our first event is bringing an alumnus home to share all of their things that they're doing. But this year, our twist is that we're bringing a professor back. So we have had an amazing day so far with David Lee, Utah's first poet laureate and perhaps more importantly, faculty member of Southern Utah University. For over three decades. So please welcome David Lee. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:39] It's an amazing wowser. Thank you. What a fun day it has been.
[00:01:44] Well, you deserve as much fun as we can possibly give you. And so I want to start and I have so many things to ask you about your writing and your process and everything, but I want to start out a bit about your history, because in my research, you have one of the more unique histories. So in in there I read boxing, baseball, pig farming, you know, professor scholar on Milton. So I don't know where to start with those. I would love to know just a bit about, maybe the boxing part.
[00:02:23] I was a yall, skinny kid growing up, which I failed to do. I didn't have a lot of athletic talent. I wasn't fast, but I certainly wasn't quick. I wasn't big, but I wasn't strong either. And I wanted to do something. And I was at that time - I've shrunk into myself now - I was up around six foot two and I could get down and box welterweight at one hundred and forty two pounds. They called me "Grasshopper" because I looked like something weird inside. Now I say I boxed. I did not say I was any good. I did it just, I did it to prove something to myself. And I don't think I ever could articulate what it was I was trying to prove. I never was into violence. I didn't really like hitting people and I sure didn't like getting hit.
[00:03:25] Right.
[00:03:26] But it was almost like a form of ballet, and I had a very, very good coach. He insisted that we learn to play chess.
[00:03:35] No kidding!
[00:03:35] Because he said anything you learn on this board will be applicable because what you do to learn to box, it's not fighting and he considered it an art form. I no longer do what he said. Defense is the most important part of boxing. Don't get hit. Don't get hurt. So it was a game. It was a game. But again, I did it, but I wasn't much good at it. I played a lot of chess. I don't remember ever winning a chess match.
[00:04:03] That's awesome! But then where did the baseball come in? Because that's two athletic things.
[00:04:09] Well, I was always the youngest kid in my class. Get set up a grade in school and when my classmates were in Pony League, I was still in Little League. When I was in Pony League, they were in Babe Ruth League. So in a sense, I was academically, one year older than my peer group and yet one year younger than my actual school group and baseball was the one sport I excelled in at that age, and I think that's probably the reason for it. I was the big kid, the old kid on the block. I watched a baseball game on television once, and the pitcher was a man named Hoyt Wilhelm. And he threw - I'm holding my fingers for you like that - he threw the knuckleball.
[00:05:04] Right.
[00:05:05] And it seems like he may have thrown a no hitter. But anyway, they interviewed him at the end of the game and he showed how to hold the pitch. And he said, "if you can throw it, you'll probably throw it pretty much perfectly the first time. And if you can't, you'll never be able to throw it." So I went out and I could throw it and I could throw that butterfly pitch. It's not fast, but it just floats and wobbles and like one of my favorite baseball players said when he was a catcher and they said, "How did you ever catch Hoyt Wilhelm?" And he said, "Oh, it's very easy. The ball would go by me and I'd walked until it stopped and I'd pick it up and throw it back to him.".
[00:05:47] That's awesome!
[00:05:48] So it's again, same thing. I was a legend in my own mind. I wasn't really very good. I was lucky. I had two mothers, my birth mother, but I also had the woman who adopted me, Miss Layla. She was a black woman. And one day she came in and said, "Mr. Dave, you got your glove and your cleats in the car?" And I said, "Yes, ma'am." And she said, "You need to go down by the airport. They need you this afternoon." Well, that was the black kids. That was the blue stars. And that that shocked me, stunned me a little bit. I said, "Oh, Miss Layla, I don't believe I can do that." She said, "Oh, darn, Mr. Dave, I just don't believe I can have no supper at all ready for you tonight." And so I went down because the Anderson boys, one of them had broken his arm that day and the other one I think got put in jail that day and they needed somebody to do batting practice and throw them and whatnot. And we got along famously and they adopted me on their team. And so I got to play in the Texas Negro Leagues for the Post Texas Blue Stars. And my favorite story out of that is on Juneteenth. I think it was the first year I played with them. Anyway, I mostly played home games. I didn't travel with the team because I was nervous about that. They were, too. But we had a game at Tahoka up on top of the cap rock, 26 miles away. And Coach wouldn't let us put our cleats on our baseball shoes in his car mess up his float boat. But we got near Tahoka and he said, "Get your shoes on. Get your shoes on. We're running late!" And I know he is gonna make us get out and go right to the field right then. Not let us warm up. "I'm gonna open the doors pry you out of the car. I'll take some time finding me a parking place. I'll stall as long as I can. Get loosened up!" So my catcher, Hardaway and I got off throwing the ball and I saw him park his car. And then he got out and leaned on the hood and pulled paper and a pencil out of his pocket and leaned over and he would look at us and he'd make a line up like he had never done it before in his life and had to think about who's going where. And finally, the other, the coach of the other team came walking over, leaned across the hood and didn't look at me, just pointed his finger at me and said to my coach - my coach's name was Heavy. "What is that?" And Heavy said, "Oh, it? It's an [albino]."
[00:08:33] That's fantastic. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. But the same thing, was a good baseball player? I wasn't even a legend in my own mind. No, I was not.
[00:08:44] But that is a great story. And I was wondering how that all came to be from reading your bio. So thanks for sharing that.
[00:08:50] You're welcome.
[00:08:51] Now, were you always a reader? Where did the, was the writing in the end getting involved in writing always a part of things, or did that come later in school? Where did that start involving itself?
[00:09:04] I think. I think, first of all, I think, you're a musician. Do you choose to be a musician or does it choose you?
[00:09:16] You know, I'm asked that all the time. I think ultimately it chooses me. But maybe I didn't know it.
[00:09:21] I agree. I don't think you choose to become a writer. I think the words choose you. I knew in first grade I was fascinated with learning to make these things on paper. And they made words and they made me. I was fascinated with that. I was a terrible student even in the first grade at intellect school. I didn't like, I just, but I liked writing and I like making stories. And I remember in the fourth grade, I stuttered and and was very, very, very shy. But we would write stories and Mrs. Rayfelt would ask if anybody want to read and the class would say "David, read his." Because I wrote funny things and vulgar things and, you know, fourth fourth grade humor things. But they liked it. And that was the first audience I ever had. As being a writer, the best thing that ever happened to me, I was given adult status at age 14.
[00:10:30] Oh!
[00:10:31] Which meant that I could get a job working as an adult. And I got a job in the cotton mill in my hometown. Post, Texas Burlington Industries. We made the sheets for back then, J.C. Penney and I worked out in the yard toting, hauling around on trucks, bales, like five hundred pound bales of cotton. When the sheets were made they would put them in boxes that weighed 30, 40 pounds and we would load them in box cars. And I worked with old men almost as old as I am now. And they accepted me and they were all talkers. Most of them had been through the second dustbowl days in Texas in the late 1940s, everyone knows about the 20s. There was one in the 40s that was devastating. And there was one fellow I worked with who's a character in my books, he lost a two section ranch. Thirteen hundred acres outside Floydada, Texas because there was no rain. All his cattle died and he was working as a day laborer having been a very successful rancher. And they were talkers and they were storytellers. And because of my little speech impediment, I didn't talk very much back then. I became a very good listener and much of what I do, especially in my oral tradition poems, comes right out of that experience. Age 16. Mark Twain said, and so did Proust, "Remembrance of Things Past," both of them said some version of any person who has lived through a childhood has enough material to write on for 400 years, and virtually everything I write comes out of those years.
[00:12:20] Beautiful. That's great. Well, then I want to ask you your Ph.D and a lot of your study as you say it, a devotee of Milton.
[00:12:31] Yes.
[00:12:31] And so I was curious where the passion for Milton came from. And what about that writing specifically spoke to you early on and perhaps also even now or if it's changed?
[00:12:43] I was a late bloomer in college. I got my first three years of college, were in seminary theology training, and I basically majored in mediocrity. I didn't work. I didn't try very hard. I didn't do very well. I found out during my third year that I'm going to get a major in something I may not even believe in. I mean, out of here. And I transferred to Colorado State University.
[00:13:10] And I got discovered in a Greek tragedy class.
[00:13:14] Oh, wow.
[00:13:16] The professor gave the midterm. When we came back in, he handed me mine. When I walked in and he said, "Would you read through it, please?" It didn't have marks on it or anything and I wanted to say something like, "Am I in trouble?" I said, "OK." I read through it. We had the class and he said, "I'm going to cut the class short today early. I'm going to have a member of the class read something to you. I've not had something quite like this before." So I read my blue book out loud. And then he passed out the other blue books and he said, "May I have your spec?" And I said, "I don't get it." He said, "Yes, you do. You will be in my office Tuesday afternoon at two o'clock and you do not have anything in the way of that. I've checked your schedule. You be there." I went to his office. He had my files laid out on his desk and he said "Please close the door." Oh, wow. And during the next 15 or 20 minutes, he informed me of what a disgrace I had been. What a shame. And he said, "I know you're a religious person, you've betrayed the God you think you don't believe in." And he just said, "Look what you've done compared to what you could have done." Anyway. I walked out of that room a convert. They did not even know what to do with me at Colorado State because I don't know what to do with those courses in theology and homiletics and all of that. So the easiest thing to do was give me a degree in speech, because anybody, you could get a degree, anybody. Donald Trump could get a degree in speech. That's not...yes, it is. Totally appropriate. All right. But I started taking, Arthur Cash was that teacher. I started taking every class from him I could and others as well and found out I really like this. I like this English. And I do like writing. And so when I graduate and filled out my graduation forms, I hand wrote them and my handwriting wasn't really good. It said Major. And I put an S-P. And then I put E-N-G, and my S looked a little bit like an A.. And so my college graduation, my certificate from Colorado State, says David Lee, who majored in agricultural engineering.
[00:15:55] Oh, my goodness!
[00:15:58] So I got drafted. I really am closing in on Militon, okay? I got I know I'm rambling, but I'm nothing if I'm not redundant and rambling. All right.
[00:16:06] But it's great to hear that sense of purpose and how you came to.
[00:16:09] I graduated on March 22nd, 1967, and on March 23rd, I got my draft notification so that my faculty at Colorado State wanted me to not be drafted, wanted me to go to Canada, wanted me to get exemptions. My dad was a World War II vet, I couldn't do it. It would have humiliated him. So I went. I served. I hated it. But I did come out with the G.I. Bill.
[00:16:39] Yeah.
[00:16:39] And I am not sorry at all, even though I detested my two years in the military and, but enough of that. I had the G.I. Bill. And I came back and went to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, because I hadn't certified to teach and I did my teaching certificate there. But a professor, visiting professor from the University of Utah, Floyd O'Neil, who ran the Western Humanities Center, heard me talking one night to a group of friends. And he came over and asked me what my plans were and I said, "I guess I'm gonna be teaching next year." And he said, "College?" "Oh, no, no. I just have a B.A. and just did my teaching certificate." And he said, "You belong in graduate school." Nobody ever said that before. And he said, "I will help you pick out the schools you want to. I want to invite you to come the University of Utah." In any case, long story short, I ended up going to Idaho State University, which at that time was halcyon days.
[00:17:51] It was it was in a high point. David H. Door was running the English department, one of the finest administrators in the history of higher education. But also there was a professor there named Larry Rice, and he was brilliant and wonderful. I took his methods of literary research class, which I had my mind fully made up. I would hate every second of it. I adored it. And the next semester, he taught John Milton and I fell in love with John Milton. But remember, I spent my first three years of college in seminary training. So Paradise Lost, this magnificent story of Adam and Eve and the Lost Garden and the Fall. It was up my avenues and I couldn't help but love the guy, both Larry Rice and John Milton. And that was the initial meeting that turned out to be the only course in Milton. I actually took, I did the rest of it independent because they when I went finally to the University of Utah to get a doctorate, the Milton teacher was on sabbatical that year. And I did everything wrong. I came out of the army with a chip on my shoulder and was in a hurry to get a job. And I just saw it as a union card. I got my master's degree in nine months.
[00:19:14] Wow.
[00:19:15] And I did my doctor's degree in one year.
[00:19:18] Wow.
[00:19:18] And missed so much. I don't recommend that to anybody. I missed so, so much. You know, I'm like Marlon Brando, "Could have been a contender!" But I got that. And then came down here and got my first job and they had a Milton course that hadn't been taught in years. And I said, why? And they said, "Because nobody wants to teach that." I said, "Somebody does." And so the reputation was developed there. I haven't done much research or publication on Milton. In fact, I wrote a poem about in this past year that's one of the first specifically on it. It's a love affair.
[00:20:04] Yeah, well, I wanted to ask, does the love affair still exist? But it sounds like yes, it does.
[00:20:09] Yes. This past year in Spain, every winter I do a study project, research study project. And this last year, for the first time since I retired from here 17 years ago, I went back and read Milton. Just for kicks, just for pleasure and re-fell in love with him. He is as good as I remembered. And it didn't always work that way. I tried a fast study the year before. It failed miserably. I did a Donte study three years ago. It did not work well at all either. But the Milton thing did.
[00:20:45] With your feelings now, I understand why you fell in love with him then, but now, how would you describe that that lasting effect? What is it about Milton that lasts for years?
[00:20:56] Well, now I speak as a poet, and Milton, really in many ways, is the poet who invented the English language. I mean, when you look at what was going on in the English language, you know, rhyme and meter. If you read Paradise Lost in the beginning, before the beginning of the poem, there's a little paragraph called Yhe Verse. In The Verse, it has this sentence, "The reader will notice in this poem the absence of rhyme, that being the invention of a wretched and barbaric age that is produced not but lame matter and halting meter." Bobby Bare dropkicking Jesus through the goalposts of life. Milton taught me you don't have to use the standard tools of poetry, A and B. English is one of the most beautiful languages ever invented for poetry. Now it's, as it says, the poem that I read today that Eleanor Wilner said "Italian asks, 'How does it want to be said? English? How does it mean? What does it mean?'" And Milton was one who had the ability to do both. Some of his language is just deliciously wonderful, just to hear. And you could listen to it if you weren't an English speaker and you would fall in love with the rhythms that he set and the things that he could do. So I came to him the second time late in my career as a poet, reading him again as a poet, not as a teacher. And I re-fell in love with him. He was brilliant. He was amazing. Do I want to meet him in the afterlife? Mm-mm.
[00:22:41] That's fantastic.
[00:22:43] That's a love affair from the distance.
[00:22:44] Yeah! Right at arm's length. Well, this is a perfect place to take a little rest with that. And I like to play some music. And I, in my reading of my research, found that you're quite a lover of jazz, I think. Afficionado.
[00:22:59] I love jazz. Yes. My next book's going to have jazz as a baseline.
[00:23:03] I was wondering about that. Yeah, that is, that's the next book, huh?
[00:23:08] That's the, it's actually gonna be two books, so I can talk about that. But yes, I do have a book on jazz. Yes.
[00:23:16] OK well, we're going to have some classics here. This is "In A Sentimental Mood." Duke Ellington. How can you go wrong? You're listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1. All right. Well, welcome back. That was "In A Sentimental Mood," a great classic played by Duke Ellington. You're listening to the A.P.E.X Hour. This is KSUU Thunder 91.1 and I am joined by David Lee. Welcome back, David.
[00:27:51] Welcome. Welcome. Thank you.
[00:27:53] I want to get into talking about your writing and some of the themes and topics and that kind of thing. And the first thing I want to ask you about is the sense of voice. Your voice in your writing is very distinctive. And people you know, I've read about people talking just about that and the vernacular speech and the very comfortable, and it's so warm and homey in so many ways. And I was just wondering how that came to be. And I know you shared a story with me of one of your early poems that sort of helped you find your voice. And I wondered if you might tell us about that.
[00:28:33] It didn't help. It gave it to me in one night. First of all, I came to poetry. Initially, I wanted to be a novelist. In fact, the first book I wrote was a novel, not a good one. Thank God. I pray prayers of thanks often to the gods who prohibited it from being published. I could have never lived it down. But I thought that because I'm a storyteller. I thought that would be my strength. And it was in graduate school. I don't remember the exact challenge, but it was a statement was made. There's never been a significant Rocky Mountain poet and someone ought to step up into that. I mean, it didn't really stick. But. It was sort of pasted on the outside of my head. And then I was taking all these classes that were poetry based and I, really if my life depended on it, I couldn't have told the difference in a good and a bad poem. I didn't know much about poetry. I could read them and I could take exams, write papers, but to have poems in front of me, say a John Donne poem and a Rod McEwan poem, I don't know that I would have I hope I would have known the excellence and the lack of excellence, but not for sure. Anyway, graduate school and the writing program saw me reading all these books about politics and he said, he grabbed me and you said, "If you will come to my house Sunday afternoon, I will show you more in one afternoon than you will learn in five months of reading those books. I'll show you how to write a poem and I'll show you." I did. And he did. And he taught me how. And I have to admit everything. He taught me. I had to unlearn. Oh, but if you've got a beginning, you can get anywhere else from there. If you don't have a beginning, you know where you're going. You're lost. He gave me a beginning, that touchstone. And I will always adore the memory of Ron Hall for getting me started and getting me in that direction. And I started reading poetry in a different way. But my early poems were open invitations, imitations of other poets in the 18th century. They constantly talked about reading the ancients and doing imitations. So I read and I imitated trying to learn different forms and styles and whatnot. And everything I wrote was pretty much academic without a voice. And then I told you this story. We lived outside Cedar City, Utah on a little farm in Mid Valley Acres, 10 acres, and I've got a couple of pigs. Jan wanted nothing whatsoever to do with them. They're messy, they're dirty, they smell. And, of course, within three months, she was so addicted to them that they were her pet. She wanted to bring him in the house. I mean, for heaven's sakes. But it became part of our life. But I've formed not only a friendship, but a partnership with John Sims, the fellow who sold me those two pigs, the initial two pigs. And one night he called and said, "David, are you real busy tonight?" I think it was a Saturday and I didn't study that hard on Saturdays. First years here. I studied nonstop because I didn't know what. But Saturdays, I'd take some time off. So I said, "No." He said "oome over.
[00:32:07] Bring Jan two. I've got some thing to show you." So we went over and John had a little bitty red pig that he had bred too early. And she was getting ready to birth. And her canal was too small. So we spent the night working with - wasn't a Saturday. It was a Sunday. It was a Sunday night. We spent the night doing that. And Jan did get in there and work with that sal and that story stopped there. We went home somewhere between 2 and 4 [a.m.]. Jan went to bed. I knew I couldn't go to sleep. I was too wired from that. And back to the previous hour, I had a Milton class that day and for me, a very important lectured talk I needed to give and I hadn't worked my way completely through it. So I told Jan, "I don't need the sleep. I'm going to work on my Milton lecture." She said, OK, OK, OK. You know, I could, back then, and I could do this sort of thing. Somewhere around six o'clock, I woke up. I was sitting straight up with the pencil in my hand, poised to write, I had a cup of coffee in front of me. Cold, stone cold with a spider floating in it. And I looked down at my yellow pad of notes and there was a full poem written. Title of the poem is "For Jan with Love." And that was the day I discovered the voice. It was in the voice of John and me. There was no academic pretentiousness. It is loaded with, not polite social linguistics. But there it was. And as I said today, sometimes as a writer, as an artist, you produce something. You don't know how you did. It's above you. It's beyond you. And you have to either destroy it or be in all of it or or learn to use it. I learned to use it because what I saw, I liked. I, first of all, thought, that can't be poetry not written that way. And then, of course I thought, "Why not?".
[00:34:24] Why not? Yeah.
[00:34:25] Yes. And that was my beginning. That was the first of the voice that's known as a John voice. And I used it to, I think, either four or five books. And then I came to a book called My Town. I don't even think I have a copy of that with me. But in my town, I found a new voice. And I mentioned earlier when we were talking about the baseball game, in Tahoka, I mentioned my catcher, S.K. Hardaway, and I loved that kid. But in my book, he became E.U. Washburn. And there was a tradition in a lot of Texas towns where I was reared, where when a child was born, you opened the Bible and put your finger down and the noun closest to it is what the child would be named.
[00:35:12] Oh.
[00:35:13] And E.U. Washburn. His family had, I think, nine boys and no girls, and they'd use that Jesus and Joshua, Abraham. And they pointed and the closest to it was Ethiopian Eunuch.
[00:35:29] Oh.
[00:35:30] And they decided since he would never learn to spell that, they called him E.U.. That was his name. And he became my voice because he was a very quiet young man, very shy. He worked in a graveyard and he was a mystic. He believe he did not accept death. They are most surely living and he would talk to them and he believed when they wanted to, they could communicate with him. And he became my voice.
[00:35:59] Wow. So you've had several voices that really, I guess, are identities, in a way/
[00:36:06] And that's actually what I do. I don't so much write my poems as much as I dream them, I believe in voices. In book nine of Paradise Lost, John Milton says, "These voices were dictated whilst slumbering the Holy Spirit, and they were all given." He took no claim for anything he wrote. He listened and simply made do with what he got. And I realized later, it's exactly what I'm doing. I see. And the first time I wrote a poem out of E.U. Washburn's family with the feminine voice.
[00:36:51] Oh.
[00:36:51] I just said "The sister." And I wrote the poem. Published the poem.
[00:36:58] Read it a couple of times in front of audiences. It was after either the second or the third time that I wrote it that she appeared to me in the dream and she said, "You call all my brothers by their name. You never call me by my name."
[00:37:16] I had to say, "I don't know your name. She said, "Yes, you do. Yes, you do."
[00:37:22] They opened the book. They pointed. And my mother said, "You are not going to name my baby girl no damn book of Luke. Her name is Trepidations. And that is my name." And so from then on, every time I read the poem, I would call her name. This is Trepidations Washburn. And one day I forgot to do it at a reading. She came that night and she kicked the out of me.
[00:37:49] Wow.
[00:37:50] So they're that real to me.
[00:37:52] Gives me chills. So sometimes writers talk about their voices being versions of themselves. But this doesn't sound like that to me. This sounds like people speaking through you.
[00:38:02] I'm a vehicle. I'm a vehicle. They talk through me. They give their stories. I had a dead spell in writing a long while. It was when I had started writing this book. It's a new book, Bluebonnets, Far Wheels and Brown Eyed Susans Women of Texas, 1940-62. Every poem in here is from a woman, OK? But right in the middle of that, I got sidetracked with with the death of my big brother, closest friend Bill Kloefkorn, and had to write this book for him.
[00:38:32] Last Call, which is amazing.
[00:38:35] Have you read Last Call?
[00:38:35] Yes.
[00:38:36] OK. Oh yay! I'm delighted. Well, I had to write that. And by the way, Kloefkorn's one of my voices. I was house sitting for a friend in Washington. They went somewhere and Kloefkorn came to see me, said "He's got a writer's studio. Get yourself out there. Let's start this book." "Whoa, whoa, wait, wait. Bill, I'm-" "No, you're not. You and I gonna write a book together. This one's got to be a good one 'cause this one's gonna be about me. So you're gonna have to have some help." And I will swear to anybody go to my dying day would lay my hand on it, saying this book is co-written. He came in and we talked through these poems and he literally gave me the poems that lead up to the monument on South Plains, that big thing that the boy builds out of used farm equipment and whatnot. Bill dictated those points to me. Some of them, he would give me things I would have to write him, but he's there. But in any case, now that's aside, when I came back to this book, after having been away for I think, 14 months, my friend and the Nevada writer, Steve Nightingale gave me his house up in the mountains for two weeks and just said, "I think you need a writer's retreat."And I went up there and did nothing for a couple of days. And that third night I opened up and the women came back to me screaming, "Where have you been?" And there is one woman in here...shoot. There's one woman in here who came.
[00:40:26] She's gonna be mad at you tonight.
[00:40:27] Oh, she's going to be. I haven't looked at this book in just ages. Oh, it doesn't really, it doesn't really matter what her name is. Anyway, these women were all yelling at me. And then to that biblical thing, that still small voice, I heard a still small voice in the back of the room saying, "I will give you my story." And I kept trying to get through to her and she said, "I'm back here. I'll give you my story and I'll give you my voice." And I think it's one of my all time favorite poems. I just haven't read from it in ages.
[00:41:12] Well, we can find it during the musical break if you want.
[00:41:15] I can't. In any case, it was just one of those moments where the poem was completely dictated to me by the voice of a woman who began when she was a little girl. Wow. Up to the final time that she was old, older woman. And that was a major, big breakthrough, learning to think and speak in a woman's voice.
[00:41:38] Wow.
[00:41:39] And so that's part of the cycle, too.
[00:41:43] I mean, I thoroughly love hearing this because I had a quote that you had spoken about, something magical happening with your writing, being surprised by the twists and turns and direction. And now it all resonates. It all makes sense that this is what you're talking about. And I was going to ask you about muses and this kind of thing.
[00:42:02] Absolutely.
[00:42:02] Now, this makes complete sense. This vehicle concept,.
[00:42:06] I do believe in muses. I believe in those voices. And I hope I don't get too much like Willie Nelson. But, you know, yeah!
[00:42:14] Do you feel that you have to particularly open yourself up to it? Do you have to be at it in a particularly peaceful or mindful place in your own life? Or is it just happened all the time?
[00:42:25] Certainly helps. Well, well, maybe not. Peaceful, mindful in my own life. I think, I think of musicians this way too. What I really like is privacy. Quiet. And a door that shuts and locks. I like to be totally and completely alone. I don't have to be happy and I don't have to be having a good time in my life. But I need that complete inner her solitude where I can totally empty out. And then the voices come in on their own. And generally they're polite with each other and generally, most of the time, quite polite with me. Here's a story. Here's a story. I'm allowed to sort of make choices along the way. Some get pretty ticked off when I don't choose them. But they'll come back.
[00:43:18] It's a bit like your childhood listening when you were working.
[00:43:21] Yeah, well, it's very much like that.
[00:43:24] Great.
[00:43:24] Very, very, very much like that.
[00:43:26] Well, let's play one more song and then more questions.
[00:43:30] OK.
[00:43:30] And from there. So I've I've some Bill Evans for you.
[00:43:34] Oh, I love Bill Evans too!
[00:43:37] All right! I guessed right then. This is "Skating in Central Park" and you're listening to the A.P.E.X Hour, KSUU Thunder 91.1.
[00:49:02] Welcome back, everyone. This is the A.P.E.X Hour. You're listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1. That was "Skating in Central Park" by the great Bill Evans. I am joined in the studio with poet and SUU English professor, now retired, David Lee. Welcome back, David.
[00:49:21] Thank you. Delighted to be back. This hour has just flown by. I've probably rambled and jabbered too much, but wow! What fun!
[00:49:31] It has been absolutely fun and magical. So I am enjoying every single minute of it. But I remembered that we did not get back to our jazz conversation. So I would love to ask about your relationship with jazz and the upcoming books.
[00:49:49] Well, I have two upcoming books. One of them is a stunner for me. I had a call out of the clear blue sky from a person that I have an absolute God's ransom of respect for, a writer I revere. And he said, "Dave there's a group of us are gonna do a conglomerate and we want to publish beautiful books. We want to publish books that no one will say, "Well, don't judge a book by its cover because we're going to put the best covers in a world on 'em. But we want them to be the best books we can get out there. And I just wanted to know if you'd like to join us." And I said, "Well, Steve, I'd love to join you. But the fact of the matter is, I'm not wealthy, I don't have a lot of money, I can't." And he said, "No, no, Dave, you're not hearing what I'm asking or I'm not asking it correctly. We would like the first book that we do to be your book, we want to do your selected poems." Well, that's you know, that's about the highest honor a writing can get. That sounds a bit self aggrandizing. But that's big in my life.
[00:51:03] Yeah.
[00:51:03] And that means I've got to spend a bit of time now going back through all my work. And as you've seen, as we've been talking, I don't even remember my homework. This is gonna be getting reacquainted with somebody I think I've forgotten.
[00:51:17] Well, you're so prolific.
[00:51:19] Yeah. Too many. I've published about 25 books. So I've got a lot of work to do. But I really want to do that. I mean, that's that's a pinnacle that we can reach. The other book, however, is the book that I thought I would start next. And it does have, not everything in the book is going to be based on jazz. But I think the centerpiece poem in the book is going to go into my background in theology and then my love for jazz. And it will be titled. It is titled. I've already written that poem. It's a long poem. Seven part poem. It's The Canonical Hours. Well, I have one part for each of the seven hours of prayer during the day. And then for each of those hours, I have chosen a jazz figure. Like you played Ellington. Well, I've got Ellington in and of course, with that on, I want that to be totally smooth in his transitions. So amazing. And I wanted to do that a section that I really, really liked writing, even though I trembled and I even wept when I wrote it. It was my section on Billie Holiday. When she died, she had a ten dollar bill taped to her body.
[00:52:36] Oh, wow.
[00:52:39] A sad, sad, broken down dead. But I've also got, you know, some some other wild jazz players in there to wake you. And what a great concept. It was fun. It was fun. I had already written a poem. We at the time owned a little place up on the Cascade River right under the Canadian border. And I had written a day up there, a three part day, and I used jazz in that one. I started that one of the first jazz songs. I remember hearing was The Birth of the Blues. Anyway, and the person who sang it wasn't even really known as a great jazz singer. It was Dinah Shore. She had a marvelous voice. Beautiful voice. And I was probably five or six when I heard her sing that. And it stuck with me forever. And then I moved to two more progressions and based on jazz. So that's that's what I'm doing now.
[00:53:43] Are both of those poems already published and available or only will be in this book?
[00:53:48] No. The Canonical Hours was published in a magazine called Paddlefish. It was published a couple, three years ago, as a matter of fact. And that magazine went out of print. I have not published the other poem that I talked about. I'm not sure it's finished yet. I'm not sure how good it is. I feel good about The Canonical Hours. I do. But yeah. Yeah, it's fun going back. I've got another one, a rip snorter poem of driving through Nevada from Idaho or somewhere trying to get down to Mesquite, Nevada, where we live. And the only thing I can find is a jazz station. And so we punctuate that the weather and the wind and the jazz and I had great fun writing that on.
[00:54:37] Oh, I love it.
[00:54:38] Rollicking jazz.
[00:54:39] I cannot wait for this book, I think it sounds great. Well, we are already, if you can believe it, out of time.
[00:54:46] Ah!
[00:54:46] I know, I could talk to you for hours. I want to ask you about how poems get finished when you know they're done.
[00:54:51] Oh, no, no. I'll answer that right now.
[00:54:53] Okay!
[00:54:53] A poem is never finished. It's finally abandoned in despair. You never finish. That's like asking you. So are you through practicing for your concert? You know,.
[00:55:05] It's never done. I could always be practicing more. No performance is ever perfect.
[00:55:09] Yes. I'm digging it for this selected poems. I told you. I have started on a little bit. I've gone back and looked at poems are 40 years ago and I've taken out a pencil. Lick the eraser and I'm rewriting sections, you know. No, never finished.
[00:55:23] Well, my two final questions are good ones. The first one that I ask everybody, and it's sort of a funny one, you can take it however you like. But if you were to meet the you from 10 years ago in a bar fight, who would win that fight?
[00:55:39] Ho, ho. Ten years ago, I wasn't 76, but maybe wiser. I think I'm wise enough now to know how to get out of that bar fight.
[00:55:53] OK, so you win because you you you'd know how to get away.
[00:55:58] I think, I think I have the ability to say, let's talk this out. And do you really want to get in a fight with an old man? I mean, I can humiliate me.
[00:56:12] Well, that's a great nswer.
[00:56:13] No, the one 10 years ago was was a lot better shape, much nastier. I've gentled down a little bit. My wife has domesticated me.
[00:56:24] I see. I see. Well, and my last question I ask everyone is your what's turning you on right now? And it could be anything. It could be just the smallest thing or the biggest thing, but it gives our audiences just another little glimpse. So David Lee, what is turning you on right now?
[00:56:40] I'm going to speak from today. Today is turning me on right now. This has been one of the very biggest days of my life. I retired 17 years ago. I've only been back on the campus. This is my third time. All totaled.
[00:56:55] Wow.
[00:56:55] I came back for the rededication of the Braithwaite arts building and got to talk about my heroes. Then I came back when the college was gracious and gave me an honorary doctorate, a humiliating day.
[00:57:08] And I came back today, invited back to talk to my former students. And it has, we've been together all day. It's frightened me. I didn't know if I could do it. I was I was afraid. And it has been one of the very, very, very best days of my life. I've loved today. So that's what's turned me on lately. Today.
[00:57:32] Wonderful, that warms my heart to hear and that is a perfect moment to sign off on. David, thank you so much for your time.
[00:57:40] My absolute pleasure. I've loved it. I wasn't really looking forward to an interview because I thought, oh, no, I'll bomb. You'll be embarrassed.
[00:57:48] No way.
[00:57:50] Thank you! I loved it.
[00:57:50] Well, it was absolutely my pleasure. I loved every minute.
[00:57:53] So did I. So did I. Yes.
[00:57:55] Thanks, everyone. See you next time.
[00:57:59] Thanks so much for listening to the A.P.E.X Hour here on KSUU Thunder 91.1. Come find us again next Thursday at 3 p.m.. For more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University and new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime, we would love to see you at our events on campus to find out more. Check out suu.edu/apex. Until next week, this is Lynn Vartan saying goodbye from the A.P.E.X Hour, here on Thunder 91.1.