<DIV><B>Bobby Joe</B><P><I>if i should die before I wake...</I><P>I don't know if I believed in ghosts <BR>before Bobby Joe Lee had his stroke <P>that big man we called Bull lying there <BR>all them years in that hospital room <P>wasn't nothing they could do <BR>but wait and see <P>if he'd try to wake up or let it go <BR>he was like a lightning-struck tree <P>didn't even know it was gone <BR>alone in there, blind and lost <P>until the next firestorm come <BR>to finish him off <P>The PBS-TV documentary on David Lee was entitled "The Pig Poet," and according to <I>The Denver Post</I> that sobriquet didn't bother Utah's poet Laureate: "I've rarely in my life been without a pig." Pigs, and the gentle-hearted redneck roustabout John, feature prominently in Lee's narratives and are integral to what he calls his "aural agrarian saga." This saga, written over the past two decades, is also populated with some of the most authentically drawn characters since those of Mark Twain. Lee's small-town universe is frequented by tragedy and near-tragedy, and transcendence most often arrives in the form of salvaged humor, whether ironic, self-depricating, or ribald. <P>"David Lee's pig poems are the best thing to happen to animals in poetry since Kit Smart's cat.'-Thomas McGrath<P>"Lee's calculatedly simple narratives are wonderfully wrought. His is a welcome voice, neither academic nor urban."-<I>Booklist</I><P>Also available by David Lee<P><I>David Lee: A Listener's Guide</I> Reading from: <I>A Legacy of Shadows</I> and <I>News from Down to the Café</I>Audio CD $12.00, 1-55659-137-3.</DIV>