David Lee Garrison
David Lee Garrison was born in Bremerton, Washington. He earned his PhD from the Johns Hopkins University, taught Spanish and Portuguese at Wright State University from 1979 to 2009, and is now retired. He has published translations of Spanish poets from Lope de Vega to Gloria Fuertes, including collections of Nobel Laureate Vicente Aleixandre (with Willis Barnstone), José Bergamín, and Pedro Salinas.
Garrison is the author of poetry collections including Light in the River (2020) and Carpeing the Diem – Poems About High School (2017). His poems have appeared widely in journals such as Connecticut Review, Poem, and Rattle, and also in several anthologies. Two poems from his book, Sweeping the Cemetery (2007), were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, and one was included in Keillor’s Good Poems, American Places. The title poem from his book, Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro, was featured by Ted Kooser on his website, American Life in Poetry.
Garrison has stated about his work, “My main goal is to communicate, so I create poems that are not hard to understand with a first reading. My poems emerge mainly from memories, as I fashion bits and pieces of my past into fictionalized configurations in a search for something more meaningful, more transcendent than my personal experience.”
Corey Andrews, in a review of Sweeping the Cemetery in Ohioana Quarterly, states that Garrison’s poetry “explores the nature of reflection and memory, probing the boundaries that separate the living and the dead. The honorable tradition of poetic memento mori is directly addressed by Garrison, serving not only as the title of one of his poems but also as the collection’s thematic core.”
Garrison’s Contributions to Translations and Poetry
David Lee Garrison has published translations of Spanish poets from Lope de Vega to Gloria Fuertes and full-length collections of Nobel Laureate Vicente Aleixandre (with Willis Barnstone), Jose Bergamin, and Pedro Salinas.
Speaking of his artistic process, Garrison has been quoted as saying, “In pursuit of communication, I compose poems that are not obscure at the first encounter. My poems are primarily born from reminiscence, as fragments of my past are sculpted into fictional interpretations, aiming to delve into something more profound and transcendent than simple personal experience.”
In his review for “Sweeping the Cemetery” in Ohioana Quarterly, Corey Andrews lauds Garrison’s reflection on the nature of memory, and his examination of the liminal space separating life and death. Notably, Andrews emphasizes how the honorable tradition of poetic ‘memento mori’ is embodied in Garrison’s work, serving as both the title of a poem and the thematic underpinning of the collection.
David Lee Garrison continues to influence and inspire, alongside his wife Suzanne Kelly-Garrison, a novelist and law professor at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio.
On a Line by Thomas Lynch
Our lives go on. The dead are everywhere.
They make the floorboards creak like ships at sea,
they wink from glistening streetlights here and there.
They listen to our music, touch our hair.
They walk beside us though we cannot see
or hear their steps. They constantly declare
themselves in letters we have saved. We stare
at those who favor them. The cypress trees
protect their souls like nesting birds. They are
not “in a better place,” they’re here. In air,
in water, earth, and fire. The timpani
of life beats on in death. This world is where
they linger, waiting for us. Say a prayer
for the dead, that they may always be
around us, in our homes and in the flare
of memories, so we do not despair.
They make their way across the river, we
can only see them off. We’re in their care
as life goes on. The dead are everywhere.