Broadstone Books
Publication Date: July 15, 2025
Paperback, 102 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-09-3
Maybe it was ten years ago when I read a poem written by David Dodd Lee about hogs. Yes, the very ones that we farmer-centered folks call swine. The poem perfectly captured the nature of the beast without the usual snarky comments about how they smelled or wallowed in the mud. He praised swine and I loved him for doing so.
Let me tell you about my favorites in David Dodd Lee’s book, The Bay, Poems by David Dodd Lee, 2025, Broadstone Books and let me also just say that anyone who has a quote in their book from Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All has me right there. I couldn’t wait to read his collection.
“Life Support” on page 12 of Lee’s book, I read twice to make sure it was about a heart monitor, which it is but it takes you from the sound of this tiny machine to mink scattering like insects and to the taste of an apple infested with a worm. It is clear the poet has a visual sense about him, he sees things very clearly and has the ability to create language so we can see what he sees, touch what he touches and we can taste the bitter apple. In this poem, we journey to the lyrical line of Lee thinking about death, but as he sees the goldfinch flit from bristly thistle to bristly thistle he forgets about death, his or anyone else’s. We learn in this poem how this little meter inside of you brings the thump, thump of your heart into your ears. The poet invites to think of this sound, how he can hear it riding in a taxi or writing his grocery list. The final line is, “Are you going to bother putting parsley on the quiche Lorraine now?” and most of us will undoubtedly think, No, probably not.
“Goodbye” on page 29 of Lee’s book, has a terrific first line, “It’s 62 degrees four days after Christmas and I’m falling in love with a woman in a Lending Tree ad.” Who wouldn’t read this poem? I did and found that the second line didn’t tell me about this woman but it told me about clowns in a circus. That is what I get for being so darn curious! This poem is written in tercets, a form I’ve found that tells the reader, this is serious stuff — so take note. Well, I did and in sixth stanza, Lee returns to the woman in the ad, how he watched it more than once. In fact, he also watches ads for AT & T, Crest Toothpaste, some obscure movie clips. But, what about the woman in the ad—what about her made him fall or start to fall in love with her? Lee ends the poem with this line, “Goodbye 2019, you heartbreaker.” I never found out about the woman in the ad, but this poem gave us all the turmoil and disaster happening all over our ravaged planet in the year 2019.
“Yellow Poem (for my mother) on page 40 is where we take a deep dive into the poets’ stored memories. Suddenly we are in a hospital room and all the monitors are frozen. A roommate talks in her sleep about God and we are thrown headlong into the frozen grounds of the hospital. The poet imagines the roommate sitting in her car, perhaps as the poet once did. The poem ends with quotes, perhaps from the mother but we don’t know. The image of a dried maple leaf flat and delicate as a piece of paper with a love letter written on it is a wonderful one to leave us with.
I’m going to end on Lee’s poem, “Perfect” on page 62, but the entire book is full of poems I could write about, think about and keep in my head. This is a two-page prose poem that is like a time capsule. It reads very fast, as if the poet was speaking so fast, you had to run to keep up with him. And there is no punctuation, just capital letters to guide you along. Lee concentrates on birds, in particular, cardinals and how they don’t have to worry about a “bad side” when we take their picture. We travel to the pharmacy with a friend to pick up Metamucil among discussions on social media. This poem has humor and it also has a good dose of melancholy about the human aging process. The poet notes that birds probably die before their eyesight gets bad.
My advice to anyone reading this is to buy The Bay, Poems by David Dodd Lee, 2025, Broadstone Books as quickly as you can. It will lead you to pay close attention to what is around you. It will also serve to help you in negotiate life as Lee does with a sense of humor. Best of all it will remind you to appreciate the endless beauty that beats its wings in the air of our ever changing world.
C. I. Marshall writes from the Mogollon Highlands in Arizona. Credits include: Birmingham Poetry Review, Poems In The Waiting Room and others. Marshall holds an MFA in Poetry, California State University, Long Beach and a B.A. in Visual Arts, Mills College, Oakland, California. Marshall won the 2022 Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award and was a 2024 and a 2025 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards Finalist a 2024 finalist for the Poetry Super Highway Contest. One of Marshalls’ poems was selected for the 2025 National Baseball Poetry Festival. For more about C.I.’s writing visit: https://consuelom.wordpress.com.