All the wasted years of playing human. This story I've held onto for dear life. Now I watch my steps go slow. - "Blue", The Last Confessionalist, 2022. Cheek Press
Not that you’d think it, but Louisville, Kentucky is one of those towns with dueling poetics. Makes it hard for a quiet poet of no reknown to know where to hang his hat, so I generally hang it at home. You’ve got the MFA’ers out of Spalding; the followers of Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, among them Ron Whitehead, also an amazing talent. Then there’s Billy Lee and his poetics of blood and bone and raw fucking emotion.
I had the priviledge of hearing Billy Lee read live once at a recording of Kentucky Homefront, a locally produced radio show that features musicians, storytellers, and the rare poet, hosted by John Gage and Col. Bob Thompson. He’s one of those that lets the poetry lead when he reads. He sat on stage, unassuming and focused, barking out his beautiful poems.
In an age in which identity politics plays a heavy role in poetic dialouges, Billy Lee identifies as human: raw, in pain, sometimes happy, but always on the edge of the abyss… the place where all the great poets learn to dance.
