Gristle: 

Poems and Pictures

Red Shuttleworth 

Red Shuttleworth's new collection of poems (with pictures), Gristle, available on Amazon, is a bridge between his Eclipse of the Sun: Boxing Poems  (University of Nevada Press, 2023) and Wolf Point: Poems (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, forthcoming in late 2024 or early 2025).

The poems in Gristle survey the contemporary American West, dive into family legacies, take on Existential Errands (inspiration from Norman Mailer's classic book), and celebrate and curse the transmogrifying sage-steppe of the Columbia Basin in central Washington State... toward the sage-steppe becoming a cheatgrass prairie.  

One poem in Gristle is on Geronimo's take on Christianity while he was a prisoner-of-war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Red Shuttleworth writes of the Columbia Basin... rock, sagebrush, rattlers, coyotes, small towns, farmers....

Poems about family include one on a paternal line great-great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Manley, who was a common foot soldier in the Confederate Army... proud infantryman for the entire Civil War.

A few poems in Gristle are inspired by Red's constant companion and physical fitness trainer, an Irish Wolfhound, Tara Finvola.

Gristle: Poems, by Red Shuttleworth, is A Bunchgrass Press Project... available on Amazon.