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.