OCR Text |
Show The Tftunderbird Monday May 20, 1985 Page 11 Lees poetry gets rave review Editors note: The following is you can write about pigs and that boar and Jan and you and me and the rest and there aint no way youre gonna quit .. This is the last time we hear Dave discuss writing poetry. The rest of the book is the poems themselves And there are some unforgettable ones Barbed ware, The Pig Hunt and The Hay Swather show the depth of difficulty of struggling to live in close connection to the land For Jan, With Love is one of the most beautiful and haunting love poems Ive ever read, even with a beginning as strange as John he comes to my house pulls his beat up an excerpt from Terry Truemans renew of SUSC Professor Dand Lee's latest poetr collection The rei wu originally appeared in the Spokane Spokesman Reneu on April 28 Lees book, The Porcine Canticles, is published by the Copper Canyon Press, and is aiailabL in the SUSC bookstore I always approach a book of poetry with certain phobic reservations Too often, the reading of poetry feels unnatural Why is so much of the stuff so hard to get at Wh do so many poets always manage to find the most convoluted, confusing, and absolutely w'eird wav to say the things they say7 So why do I keep battling away at it7 The biggest part of the reason is the excitement and joy of finding a book like David Lees The Porcine Canticles It is hard to find enough good things to say about this book. Its Student vocalists earned their applause at a recital recently. Vocalists perform in recital A Day in Spring was the theme, and the vocal recital given by the -students of Laurie Decker was definitely cheery. Songs such as Over the Rainbow, performed by Wendy Barraclaugh, and Tomorrow, sung by Karen Witzel, contributed to the aura of joyousness. The special guest was Anna Mooy, choir director at Cedar High School. Mooy performed a vocal solo, and, along with Roger Bean, accompanied the student vocalists on the piano. Decker, who has worked professionally in opera, feels that the different groups on campus need to work together to benefit the students more fully. One of the things I think should be done, said Decker, is to correlate the music and theatre classes together so that a student who is interested m both can study both. Decker also feels there is an unhealthy rivalry between the music and theatre departments. So many musically talented students come here. Why stifle one talent for the sake of another? she asked. Decker also said that instructors should start thinking of students, instead of being threatened by talent. With the facilities and the talent we have, theres no reason for a person to have to specialize in one field, if they are interested m more than one thing, i i I SMALL HAMBURGER SMALL FRIES SMALL DRINK ONLY $1.19 EXPIRES MAY 27, 1985 LIMIT 1 COUPON PER CUSTOMER v "v EVENING SPECIAL FROM 6:00 PM TO 11:00 PM SMALL HAMBURGER SMALL FRIES SMALL DRINK ONLY $1.19 EXPIRES MAY 27, 1985 LMIT 1 COUPON PER CUSTOMER a is truck in my driveand honksDave John sez Dave my red sowshe got pigs stuck and my big hands they wont goand I gotta get them pigs out .. The poem goes on to tell how Dave and his wife Jan work all night trying to save the sow dying in labor. It is a poem that travels unbelieveable emotional distances, from comedy to love to genuine sadness. Arguably the best poem in the book is The Muffler and the Law, a great poem about beating not just city hall, but the worst spirit of stupidity and mediocrity in the hands of fools in power. Reading these poems, feeling their power and life, it is hard to believe that David Lee left pig farming a number of years ago to concentrate his energies on teaching at Southern Utah State College. The epic quality of the work is strangely reminiscent of the great epic poets of the past, including John Milton of Paradise Lost immortality. I am certain it is no accident that Lee is a Milton scholar. I love this book of poetry. There is nothing wrong with it at all. Whether you like poetry or hate it, live in the city, suburb or countryside, listen to Nozart or Willie Nelson or both, this is a work of art, a living, breathing wonder that you have to either read, or accept that you missed 'Something marvelous, something that could have touched your soul. HERMIES TOO! 546 NORTH MAIN STREET 4t 231 NORTH 1100 WEST EVENING SPECIAL FROM 6:00 PM TO 11:00 PM difficult to imagine anyone writing high art about raising pigs in Utah Its even harder to believe that such poems could be epic in style and content. But that is exactly what Lee does in this collection. The Porcine Canticles are narrative poems, that is, poems that tell stories. They are populated by a number of characters but mostly by the poet, his wife, Jan, and his friend John. John is one of the greatest character creations Ive ever met in poetry Saying that makes me feel like a jerk in that John does not seem like a literary character to me. He is more genuine, more human than most people I know in real life. The poet narrator of these poems, Dave, and John have an amazing friendship. John knows pig farming and understands rural realities in ways that Dave is carefully learning In the opening prose-poeLoading a Boar, Dave is lamenting his inability to wiite the poems he longs to W'rite. As they push and pull, grunt and sweat, getting the boar into the back of a truck, John says, .. you aint got started yet and the reasons cause you trying to do it outside yourself and aint looking in and if you wanna write pomes you pomes about what you gotta know and not about the rest and There nothing wrong with it. I love this book. Wit, r c x .. t j |