Bøger af John B. Lee

The title for That Isn't You is inspired by a comment made by my mother concerning a video transcribed from an old eight-millimeter film. In a still shot, isolated from a single frame of the moving picture, I am riding high on my uncle John's shoulders. When Mother saw the photograph she said "that isn't you," meaning she could not imagine a day from the past when I would have had that kind of relationship with my father's elder brother, the bachelor farmer who lived in our house.In the photograph I am obviously delighted and thrilled and full with the joy of riding high on my six-foot-two uncle's shoulders. So, her phrase got me to thinking about "identity" and how we see ourselves, how we are seen by others who might claim to know us well, how we are seen by friends and familiars, how we are seen by strangers, both in chance meetings, and in brief encounters, how we are seen after we pass away when the living refuse to acknowledge what I call 'the full grumble of the dear departed." The true self, the persona, the disconnection between the masks we so often wear to show the world what we wish to reveal, and the face behind the mask. As an aging man I sometimes feel I shave a stranger every morning. I catch a glimpse of my own reflection and wonder, "Who are you?" I was once startled beyond words by being greeted at a family picnic by a seldom-seen relative, "So, how is my sexy cousin doing?" Surely, she could not mean yours truly. It was quite embarrassing because I think she thought I saw myself that way, when it could never be further from the truth.

Say this of me, reader, after the voice-vanish of this life. I felt the joy of foolishness and in the muddy shoes of morning saw love.--John B. Lee. 105 pp.

Suffused with light and air, the poems have the clarity of great photography, the feel of wind in the hair, the hushed compassion for everything and everyone seen and heard.There is a rich exuberance underlying all impressions, but not exploited at the expense of deep feelings.There is a subtle basic bass line supporting the sparkling right hand figures of Lee's style--an unerring ear matched to an intensity of vision, and both in the service of heart, mind and soul.More and more, I'm impressed by Lee's wish to communicate in artistic language without compromise--by his steely discipline as he balances the richest of language with spiritual insight, avoiding the cheap plays of irony, frippery vulgarity that tarnishes so much of "People's Poetry".This is subtly conveyed by his kind shading of metaphor with "like'' since similes are less dazzling and therefore more sympathetic to the nerves of the common reader as he sublimely manipulates emotions with all the artistry of the poet aligned with the gravitas of the image.John B. Lee is "the" People's Poet with the hidden agenda of a spiritual adviser, a magician of language whose poems often conclude with an amazing transcendence of intellect confronted by the inexpressible and surrendering to it in a skyrocket of wild imagery and pure poetry.I admire the unselfconscious pride with which Lee propagates his love of literature--its power and its glory--around his town and around the world--an evangelist of truth and beauty. To read Lee's work is to believe in them for the first time all over again. God bless him. by George Whipple