So Quietly the Earth

For some 30 years David Lee has been writing narrative style poems about people living in the country he loves the most: the rural Southwest. He was Utah's first Poet Laureate and has won a string of prestigious awards and only recently retired as chair of the Dept. of Humanities, Languages, and Literature at Southern Utah University. This is his fifteenth book of poetry and the first to explore in depth what has always been in the background of his work-the desert and canyon country of the Back of Beyond in the American Southwest.Thus, this book is his effort to honor the heartbreaking beauty of, and despair for the destruction of, his beloved homeland. The book is divided into four sections or basic elements consisting of earth, fire, water, and air. Beginning at dawn and continuing throughout the day in a walking journey the reader is treated to Lee's theological, philosophical, and environmental meditations. The book opens and closes with a requiem and provides landscape portraits that reach far beyond the traditional "regional poetry." Lee simply see's things "out there" commonly missed by others. This is a must read by one of america's finest poets.