Kirjahaku

Poetry of the American West by award-winning poet Red Shuttleworth.

American poetry of the Washington State steppe and scrublands.Red Shuttleworth's Straight Ahead shows readers a crisply-drawn textual landscape of the scablands of Eastern Washington. This is a wounded land pocked with volcanic rock, coyotes, and "plow-ripped / floury soil" that, like the mythic Old West, "declines and crumbles / to blue rock suburban driveway gravel" and "double-wide farmhouses." In these stark and masterfully-wrought scenes-most crafted in chiseled tanka-like five-line poems-we get a glimpse into this microcosm of America through Shuttleworth's astute, terse, and always human observations. In Straight Ahead we hear the twenty-first century lament of the exile in the Western wilderness.- Barbara Brinson Curiel, author, Mexican Jenny and Other Poems, winner of the 2012 Philip Levine Prize

Wolf Point steps into the raw and rugged landscape where the beauty of desolation meets the complexity of human experience. Shuttleworth's striking collection draws readers into a world where mirages shimmer at the edge of reality, and life's stark truths are laid bare under the vast, open skies of a high-desert town. Through vivid imagery and profound emotion, Wolf Point explores the thin line between survival and despair, capturing the essence of the human condition in its most unguarded moments. From the haunting "Mirage at Graveyard-Border" to the poignant "When They Wash the Dead," each poem is a journey through the heart of America's forgotten spaces, where every crater-faced stranger, every piece of skittering debris, tells a story of endurance and loss. As Shuttleworth delves into the soul's deepest recesses, from the despair of love lost in "Pocket Full of Quarters" to the eerie tranquility of "Likeness," where past and present collide. It's a world where autumn brings not just the miracle of changing leaves, but meteor nights and bone particles on the wind, where tattered missionaries and one-eyed kings roam streets that echo with the ghosts of the American dream.

In this striking poetry collection, Red Shuttleworth, who holds the record as the oldest active boxer (professional or amateur), offers evocative imagery that unapologetically reveals the life of a boxer. From the inspiring hopes of an early career to agonizing defeats, the poems in Eclipse of the Sun take readers on a journey from moderate successes to the realization that a dream of a promising future has become the reality of the long haul of a journeyman. Along the way, Shuttleworth rubs elbows with greats like Muhammad Ali, Chickie Ferrara, and Ron Lyle, exposing the resolute path and difficult end of a hard-lived life.This collection is an homage to boxing at its grittiest levels, and to fighters who persevere—with hope, blood, and bone—against sense and loss. Few professional boxers earn a living in the ring, and even fewer arrive in their forties with any money left from their sport. In this collection, boxers attain poverty rather than riches, end up in post-career menial jobs, and have no pension plan to fall back on. Shuttleworth's poetry is a visceral inside look at the brutality and humanity at the heart of boxing.

Praise for Tumbledown"Red Shuttleworth's Tumbledown takes us to an isolated Nevada desert and inserts us into the lives of a quirky cast of misfits, spirits, and a talking coyote. Through each scene these characters are faced with choices and challenges and their own versions of Heaven and Hell with a little Wild West always lurking in the background."-- Anita La Cava Swift"In Shuttleworth's plays, myth and the reality of the West meet head-on, like a couple of adversaries heading for a final showdown. Tumbledown offers a West full of the possibility of redemption, even if some of the characters don't take advantage of that offer. Tumbledown's characters are ready to charm, steal, and kill their way through life, all the while aware that the environment around them -The West-- plays a role in their choices."-- Robert Nott"Red Shuttleworth's Tumbledown is powerful and disturbing. Shuttleworth creates plays with a rare panache for uncovering troubling truths with a vivid sense of character, violence, and theatricality."-- Vincent Murphy"Love Red Shuttleworth's Tumbledown. Welcome to the Wild West where everyone is broken and hope is as elusive as a rattler's love. Shuttleworth, in poem after poem and play after play, illuminates the brutal and haunted immediacy of the contemporary West. A wasteland of bleak, vibrant, desperate, and forgotten survivors. And it's f**king funny as hell. Tumbledown knocked me out."-- Ethan Phillips