His 1999 collection News From Down to the Café was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and, in 2001, he was a finalist for the position of United States Poet Laureate.
He has been acclaimed by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities as one of the twelve greatest writers to ever emerge from the state.
Lee was born in Post, Texas and graduated from Colorado State University and took his PhD at Utah State University, for a current biography see Samara Press and Lees most recent book, “Rusty Barbed Wire” He published his first book of poetry, The Porcine Legacy, in 1974.
He was also the last white athlete to play on a Negro league baseball team, and the only one to do so after the dissolution of the Texas Blue Stars.
Lee earned his Ph.D. with a concentration in the poetry of John Milton and taught at Southern Utah University for three decades, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature.