“Go another round”:
On Red Shuttleworth’s Wolf Moon
In the early 2000’s, I began collecting country music, early rock n’ roll, and gospel. I remember buying those lavish boxed sets from the German company, Bear Family Records, who licensed the music from American labels. I remember thinking at the time how strange it was that all this wonderful music was not released in America. I concluded there was no market for it, at least on the East coast. I remember listening for hours to the Carter Family, Waylon Jennings, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe, Tex Ritter, the Collins Kids, Dick Curless, Hank Snow, Bonnie Owens and so many others. This was a music that talked about real life, about the pain of losing your loved one, about believing in the afterlife, in God or even the loss of faith in a beyond; so while there was a religious element to the music is was also secular and talked about young love, violence, and being unfaithful: tears will be the chaser for your wine. I remember loving the minimalism of the Bakersfield sound, listening to Buck Owens and Tommy Collins as well as those great records that Bonnie Owens (who was both the wife of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard) released. There was also Harry Smith’s glorious Anthology of American Folk Music. As I was writing this essay on Red Shuttleworth’s Wolf Moon, all that music was playing in my mind.
Wolf Moon contains a number of photographs that accompany several of the poems. These are poems that contain echoes of the old western frontier; it is a world of dusty roads and pickup trucks, of old girlfriends, ghosts that linger under red flashing hotel signs, and Irish whiskey. One photo is of a place called Reb’s Café, in Benson, Arizona. The neon sign jumps out at a viewer since most of the scene is in darkness. Shuttleworth writes, in the poem on the facing page, “A Midnight Past Christmas,” “At one age or another, you might reckon there is no / key to anything. You either luck-out or get stomped / by the Devil’s hooves.” I can imagine the patrons of this bar, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, mulling over their lives, their past mistakes, their failures, their good times, roads taken or not, while drinking from a flask of whiskey. Another photo is of the door of a house, covered in snow, as is the surrounding area. It appears to be late at night, and the entire image is bathed in a cool blue light that is ghostly. In the poem that faces the image, “The Wolf Moon That Is,” Shuttleworth evokes the ghosts that reside in us all:
Wolf Moon contains a number of photographs that accompany several of the poems. These are poems that contain echoes of the old western frontier; it is a world of dusty roads and pickup trucks, of old girlfriends, ghosts that linger under red flashing hotel signs, and Irish whiskey. One photo is of a place called Reb’s Café, in Benson, Arizona. The neon sign jumps out at a viewer since most of the scene is in darkness. Shuttleworth writes, in the poem on the facing page, “A Midnight Past Christmas,” “At one age or another, you might reckon there is no / key to anything. You either luck-out or get stomped / by the Devil’s hooves.” I can imagine the patrons of this bar, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, mulling over their lives, their past mistakes, their failures, their good times, roads taken or not, while drinking from a flask of whiskey. Another photo is of the door of a house, covered in snow, as is the surrounding area. It appears to be late at night, and the entire image is bathed in a cool blue light that is ghostly. In the poem that faces the image, “The Wolf Moon That Is,” Shuttleworth evokes the ghosts that reside in us all:
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No fucking let-up, a voice comes to you from inside
your shock-wavering skull. Thought is companion. Wet snow at the front door, dark cattle further on, a dwarfish pony somewhere behind the house. Past midnight. Soak your fist in brine. Go another round. The score goes in circles, without win or loss past midnight. Cheap cigar, moon-bright bourbon |
The speaker in the poem is going rounds with his memories which contain ghosts of the past. There’s no winner and no loser in this game, just the night and the silence of the snow covered plains. There is another photo, black and white, titled Strippers on Break, Oklahoma City. In the foreground is a woman, smoking. We do not see her face. In the distance, is another stripper leaning on the bar. The bar is lit up. The poem on the facing page, “The Trouble of Clean Regret” is about the memory of a woman: “Back at the end, before you start over again, you remember / her long rain-drenched hair…pastel flowers and leaves…” But “there is no starting over…an old house with dirty / windows, bug-eyed ranch children never dreaming / they’ll want to break away, head for stark suburbia…” The problem of “clean” regret is that it involves with difficult compromise with often painful memories:
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and you know she’ll never lose her shine or take
to pills or store-front alternative medicine gurus. Back at the end, you take turns speaking from slender books. |
Sometimes, it is better to “slash memory”: “My death-gape face in a mirror, no breath. / Okay, so sometimes it is better to slash memory.” And “Shame, the residue of sorrow, is also without answers.” On the facing page is a photo of Cochise County, Arizona. In the photo, we see a wide plain, with scant foliage, and the blue mountains dominating in the background.
In the poem, “No Margin for Error,” Shuttleworth writes
In the poem, “No Margin for Error,” Shuttleworth writes
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The land is dead again. Boots are too tight to go six
feet down. Snake fang. Cheap-money bus window: follow the smoke to torn n’ crumpled Bibles. You bruised or haunted? |
There is a sense of fatality in these poems and a kind of tough acceptance of life and death. These lines could be lyrics from a Tex Ritter song. I’m thinking of the one whose title is “Rye Whiskey”:
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Jack o' Diamonds, Jack o' Diamonds and I know you of old
You've robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold It's a whiskey, you villain, you've been my downfall You've kicked me, you've cuffed me, but I love you for all It's a whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry If I don't get rye whiskey, well, I think I will die I'll eat when I'm hungry, I'll drink when I'm dry If the hard times don't kill me, I'll lay down and die I'll tune up my fiddle and I 'll rosin my bow I'll make myself welcome, wherever I go Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry If a tree don't fall on me, I'll live till I die |
It is a theme that runs through many country music songs. Life is so close to death. Shuttleworth talks of the “mumble-dark night” and the “scent of Irish soda bread being baked” and the “winter desert.” These images evoke the ghosts of a western frontier. The images are compounded of mirage and snapshot. Shuttleworth writes: “Out of bed I walk through a dream- / restaurant, waiters serving lamb chops topped / with mint jelly.” Finally, he concludes`: “The brain is poorly cushioned against being / rocked by punches. Nightmares…cobblestones.” These lines are from a poem titled, “At 2:45 A.M.” These are the thoughts of man who has seen many things and experienced love and loss, the pain of being, and felt the overwhelming silence that greets one at night. He is at war with himself but it is a war he cannot win. Time is against him. Memories flood his mind, as if he is unable to control the feelings of regret and of loss.
These are eternal themes in the music of the West. It is a sound that is not valued in America any more. Americans would rather be entertained on the internet. It is a nation that only values the young. I spent years taking care of my father who was suffering from dementia. His only pleasure was watching a small black and white tv and very rarely flipping through the pages of his wedding album. I often regret not asking him many questions about his past. I used to go to a local dive bar when I was living in New Jersey, where men stared at their drinks, or engaged in strained conversation with an older woman, or occasionally erupted into laughter. It was where the older, working class people went after work and probably spent most of their wages on alcohol. I’m reminded of John Wieners’ poem, “Children of the Working Class”:
These are eternal themes in the music of the West. It is a sound that is not valued in America any more. Americans would rather be entertained on the internet. It is a nation that only values the young. I spent years taking care of my father who was suffering from dementia. His only pleasure was watching a small black and white tv and very rarely flipping through the pages of his wedding album. I often regret not asking him many questions about his past. I used to go to a local dive bar when I was living in New Jersey, where men stared at their drinks, or engaged in strained conversation with an older woman, or occasionally erupted into laughter. It was where the older, working class people went after work and probably spent most of their wages on alcohol. I’m reminded of John Wieners’ poem, “Children of the Working Class”:
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Yes, life was hard for them, much more hard than for any blo
ated millionaire, who still lives on their hard-earned monies. I feel I shall have to be punished for writing this, that the omniscient god is the rich one, cared little for looks, less for Art, still kept weekly films so close for the free dishes and scandal hot. Some how though got cheated in health and upon hearth. I am one of them. I am witness not to Whitman’s vision, but instead the poorhouses, the mad city asylums and re- life worklines. Yes, I am witness not to God’s goodness, but his better or less scorn. |
In the poem “Lump Sum,” Shuttleworth remembers “so many B-movies, characters in fake-distress…A plume of smoke rose from a far- / neighbor’s pasture, a grayish-green cloud…someone’s yesterdays.” It is a sentiment that one finds in many country songs, such as those from the Carter Family.
There is also a sense of the magical that pervades these poems, the magic behind everyday life. In “Raspy…Cheap Cologne,” Shuttleworth writes, “We used to make fire on corn stubble, signals to any Gaelic goddess.” In “Routine Chores and Phone Fever,” Shuttleworth writes of a “curiosity about Asiatic shamans…chicken-bone readers. / What persists to the coffin: cattle at barb wire, salt ‘n mineral / blocks tossed from the back of a pickup, a frothy-white moon.” The concern with age and death in these poems turns to magic, old folk magic, but realizes that what will persist after death are the mundane things, “blocks tossed from the back of a pickup” and the old moon. Nature is cyclical and changeable. Man is time-bound: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Red Shuttleworth’s book, Wolf Moon, is essentially about memory, and the process of aging; the series of poems are visual, almost cinematic, accentuated by actual photographs for some of the poems. A reader gets the sense of the wide plains of the west, the kinds of lives that the people live there, their relation to life and death, and a certain harsh acceptance of fate. It is a world of working class people, strippers, patrons of motels, bars, and cafes, who bargain with the night for a little more time to enjoy themselves before last call. Shuttleworth writes, in the last poem of the book, “Desert Chill”: “It’s taken me seventy-five years to half- / believe I have a handle on my life.” Throughout the book, he evokes the voices in his head (the quote in the beginning of the book is from Revelations 16:18: And there were voices ), all the memories, and regrets, in an attempt to fight them off. But there are no winners or losers. Just another day at the races. And, “Excess is that girl purifying her absence / with a Cowboy Junkies song…on repeat.”
There is also a sense of the magical that pervades these poems, the magic behind everyday life. In “Raspy…Cheap Cologne,” Shuttleworth writes, “We used to make fire on corn stubble, signals to any Gaelic goddess.” In “Routine Chores and Phone Fever,” Shuttleworth writes of a “curiosity about Asiatic shamans…chicken-bone readers. / What persists to the coffin: cattle at barb wire, salt ‘n mineral / blocks tossed from the back of a pickup, a frothy-white moon.” The concern with age and death in these poems turns to magic, old folk magic, but realizes that what will persist after death are the mundane things, “blocks tossed from the back of a pickup” and the old moon. Nature is cyclical and changeable. Man is time-bound: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Red Shuttleworth’s book, Wolf Moon, is essentially about memory, and the process of aging; the series of poems are visual, almost cinematic, accentuated by actual photographs for some of the poems. A reader gets the sense of the wide plains of the west, the kinds of lives that the people live there, their relation to life and death, and a certain harsh acceptance of fate. It is a world of working class people, strippers, patrons of motels, bars, and cafes, who bargain with the night for a little more time to enjoy themselves before last call. Shuttleworth writes, in the last poem of the book, “Desert Chill”: “It’s taken me seventy-five years to half- / believe I have a handle on my life.” Throughout the book, he evokes the voices in his head (the quote in the beginning of the book is from Revelations 16:18: And there were voices ), all the memories, and regrets, in an attempt to fight them off. But there are no winners or losers. Just another day at the races. And, “Excess is that girl purifying her absence / with a Cowboy Junkies song…on repeat.”