Saturday, August 30, 2014

BEAT OF CROW WING: A Red Shuttleworth Poetry Chapbook



Beat of Crow Wing

poems

Red Shuttleworth


Beat of Crow Wing, a Red Shuttleworth poetry chapbook, published by Bunchgrass Press in a limited edition, presents nine poems:

Voice Over
Brain-at-Whirl
Horizon / Illusion
Window / Ghosts
Thin Saturday Morning
Don't Mind the Wait
Animal / History Will...
Chance / Striking a Pose
and
Darkness / Wine


Red Shuttleworth
(East of Ely, Nevada, August 1999)

Monday, August 25, 2014

WHAT'LL WE DO THERE?: A Red Shuttleworth Chapbook



What'll We Do There?

poems

Red Shuttleworth


What'll We Do There? is a five-poem Red Shuttleworth limited edition Bunchgrass Press chapbook.

Four of the poems in the chapbook are from autumn of 2011... revisited/revised beyond recognition:

Soon... White Autumn Leaves
Ol' Tumbler for the Neon-Somewhere-Else
Poem for October 14, 2011
and
What'll We Do There?

Since these poems are now on paper, in a chapbook, they are no longer available on the blog.

The fifth poem in the chapbook, Darkness in Particular, is new and was recently posted on this blog... where it remains temporarily available to readers.

Note on the title:
A year before Wolfie, our Irish Wolfhound (of five and a half years) was diagnosed with fatal osteosarcoma, we chanced into a brief talk about death, about the possibilities of an after-life that he and I might share.  Wolfie assumed that there is such a place and that we would continue our existence on such a plane.  But he had concerns, asking (as would, perhaps, a three-year-old child), What'll we do there?  As was my habit during Wolfie's life, I opened a notebook to catch his words.  The poem that arrived from the title had absolutely nothing to do, at least so far as I could tell, with Wolfie's question.

Note on the cover photograph:
A couple of weeks ago, at the urging of my wife, Kate, we drove ninety miles to a pull-off-the-road place east of Washtucna, Washington, on the north side of state highway #26.  It is the site of a recurring dream I have of our beloved, lost-to-bone-cancer Wolfie.  In my dream, it is night and raining and there is a greenish hue to that world, and Wolfie asks,  What is this place? And, Where am I?  I rise out of this recurring dream in anguish... filled with irrational guilt and rational loss.  Kate and I did not perceive anything of-or-from Wolfie at that lonesome rest stop for weary truckers rolling from Moscow, Idaho to Seattle... not a sign of him at all.  But, looking north up a hill, looking at Mullan Road, a 19th century unpaved road between military forts for the cavalry, I remembered the several times that, halfway to or from Moscow to visit my daughter, Ciara, and my son, Luke, we walked Mullan Road, Wolfie and me, walked uphill and looked back down at the beautiful, still-rough 'n hard cow country that borders the Columbia Basin and the Palouse.  Wolfie always enjoyed that walk.  After I snapped the photograph that is on the cover of this chapbook, I walked uphill on Mullan Road with our current Irish Wolfhound, Peaches, walked it in living, loving, forever-memory of Wolfie. Although the photograph seems right for the included poems, the poems are not about Wolfie... not consciously, no. 

  Red Shuttleworth
(2010)


Friday, August 22, 2014

Leroy Jones

Leroy Jones
(Las Vegas, NV, 1975, while a sparring partner
for Ron Lyle: photo by Red Shuttleworth)


Leroy Jones

The big man, 6'5", over 300 pounds,
is rag-polishing a 1973 powder blue
Mercury Cougar XR-7, Don't talk
what you totally don't know, not to me.
Only Larry Holmes could stop me,
with a thumb to an eye, detached retina,
at Ceasar's in Vegas... real deliberate.

If you talk boxing, say I was naturally big.
The trunk of the Cougar flies steamy-open:
platters of porterhouse steaks, mashed potatoes.
No glutton, I never ate more than my fill.
Jones wipes a window smudge with a rag,
Man, I love to keep my ride together.
The fight game?  I was mountain-big,
flowed like a tidal wave of sorrow.


Monday, August 18, 2014

THE RECLUSE: A RED SHUTTLEWORTH CHAPBOOK



The Recluse

Five Poems

Red Shuttleworth


The Recluse, a limited edition Red Shuttleworth chapbook from Bunchgrass Press, contains five poems:

The Recluse #39
Try and You'll See
The Recluse #41
Seven Decades
and
The Recluse #97



East of Washtucna, Washington, Looking North at Mullan Road



Red Shuttleworth

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Wolfie Shuttleworth

Wolfie Shuttleworth

Wolfie Shuttleworth

January-white... dense ice fog rolls
and twists across a wet blacktop road.
Dreamland-anguish.  Wolfhound in Deadland.
His boyish, cheery pre-school voice,
Where am I?  I don't know this place.
You recognize this wide road...
west of Dusty, broad north side gravel
shoulder for drunks and truckers to doze,
for a man to walk a road-weary hound.
Wolfie sits, stares up at you in Deadland,
waits, suggests as he always suggested,
Hey, I know where we can drive to...
a grassy fun field to run forever in.