Paul “Red” Shuttleworth and I crossed trails in ’85 after he caught wind of my first book, THE MAKE-UP OF ICE, and invited me to read in Norfolk, Nebraska where he was teaching at N.T.C.C. I remember thinking to myself during the few days I stayed with his beautiful rural family—wife, Kate, and children, Maura, Luke, Ciara, and Jessi—in an old farm/ranch house outside of Winside, “I doubt I’ll EVER meet another being on this planet in this lifetime who so absolutely loves, and lives for, and thrills over, the poetic journey, the making of poems.” I was right—so far, I have not met that Poet.
Red has dedicated the past four decades to crafting strong poetry, has published umpteen chapbooks and one full collection, WESTERN SETTINGS (University of Nevada Press), which received the first Spur Award for Poetry from The Western Writers of America in 2001, and has also written a number of plays that have been produced by various theaters across the West.
BRIEF LIVES (Peckinpah cover portrait by artist, Ciara Shuttleworth) offers sixteen 14-liners, including titles Wyatt Earp, Jack London, Georgia O’Keeffe, Will Rogers, Hank Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Waylon Jennings…. It sells for a miniscule fin, 5 clams, ½ sawbuck—less mazuma than you pay your horseshoer for the nails before he even drives ‘em; fewer simoleons than you fork over for a pint of Guinness (+ tip) in most U.S. of A. Irish waterin’ holes; a far better deal than the fuel it takes to mow your foolish lawn on a sweltering afternoon when, trust me, the Musical Universe would most certainly sing your praises more lovingly were you to spend instead that money on, and time with, Red’s poems.
Send $5.00, which includes S&H, to Red Shuttleworth, 10482 Road 16 NE, Moses Lake, WA 98837. Make sure to include your return address.
Thanks,
Red F.G. Shuttleworth and Whiskey Zarzyski
ENTRIES:
Close Encounters—The Interview
Commencement
Putting the Bite into Cowboy Poetry
Newsflash: 01-13-08
Newsflash: 11-28-2007
Proclamation/Preview
Newsflash: 10-04-2007
Making Wood
Postscript to Making Wood
Tom Russell/Cowboys & Indians
Western Horseman review
Tom Russell review
Ray March review
Red Shuttleworth
Happy Birthday Paul!
(News?) Flash: 4-24-2007
© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
RED SHUTTLEWORTH’S BIRTHDAY, BASEBALL, BOILERMAKER BARDS BOMBASTIC, AND THE HORRIBLE MORNING AFTER
His lower lip squeegees the Guinness
foam from his Doc Holliday mustache
shining silver in the kitchen
light where we drink
the post-poetry-reading polite applause
out of our lives. Cleansing
our palates with one long last pull each
off a fifth of Bushmills, Red preaches
The Durham Bull Gospel
according to Dirty Al Gallagher
skippering the club
in Red’s bullpen catcher heyday. Red
demonstrates—sofa for backstop,
housecat curled asleep for home-plate—
the split-fingered fastball, the knuckler,
a dozen other lollapaloozas
I am far too hammered
to ever remember. Quaffing
the heavenly guts out of the sanctimonious
Moses Lake night, we play Hank and Haggard,
Willie, Waylon, Cash, Van Zandt, Shaver,
Lucinda-the-poet’s-daughter-Williams,
Tom Russell and Bob Dylan, lusty
song lyrics cheering us on. We talk
bucking horses and long-ball-hitters—Mays,
Moonshine, Midnight, Ruth, Airwolf, Maris, Mantle,
Spitfire, Aaron…. After Red reads me a pistol
about his slugger son, Luke Appling,
sleeping with a coyote, we howl to the Irish
wolfhound, Piper, yodeling to Dave Alvin
blues while the last cold fly of October
kicks-in from an east sill. Our window
on the world we love enough
to hurl our 99-mile-per-hour heat to
straight down the ol’ pipe-a-roo-ski
becomes a juicy gusano
beckoning from the Davy Jones locker
bottom of a half-full bottle
of rotgut mescal. Lucky for us
today is not a day quite good enough to die on,
in the wake of pitching God
high and inside.
For Kate
(From Roadwork In The Boneyard—a manuscript)
© Red Shuttleworth. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
