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Western
My favorite flavor of Western is revisionist; my second favorite flavor, spaghetti.
Unforgiven is the best Western of all time; don’t at me.
An acidic landscape, accelerated, unstructured. How long before no vestiges of wild country remain?
The Best Western motel chain began in California in the 40s, but can now be found all around the nation.
I really liked The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but I could not stop thinking how all three of those guys needed to drink a lot more water. The sun above a red-hot poker, stoking greed, stoking wrath.
One of Custer’s many nicknames was Old Iron Butt.
Fistful of dollars, fistful of fists. The best revenge is not living well; it’s simply not wanting revenge to begin with.
“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” said a minor character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Entertaining for sure, but bad for democracy.
The noun meaning “a book or movie about the Old West” is first attested from 1909.
I like when a character lays his ear to the rail to listen for the heartbeat traversing the train tracks.
Bemused fatalism may be the most effective bravado.
The sun may be unforgiving because we are unforgivable.
According to Evan S. Connell, the early Mandans believed “there was not only a benevolent spirit but an evil spirit which came to earth before the good spirit and whose strength was greater.” Seems pretty accurate.
Abolish the Second Amendment.
For the notorious Mexican standoff scene in the cemetery, Leone told Morricone to compose a track “like the corpses were laughing from inside their tombs,” and that’s what it sounds like. It sounds exactly like that.
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Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She is the author, most recently, of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her latest collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, has just been released by Texas Review Press and her next novel, From Dust to Stardust, will be published by Lake Union Press in Fall of 2023.
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Mountain Chief, Blackfeet War Leader by Terrance Guardipee, Siksika (Blackfeet), 2008
Abolish the Second Amendment and drink more water. And eat spaghetti for just a few dollars more. There's a lot of good advice in this poem. Thanks for such a great combination of words on this Sunday morning.
Posted by: Anne Harding Woodworth | November 27, 2022 at 10:46 AM
Fine musings on the West Westerns and movies about same. And what do you think of "The English" series? Yes, revoke the 2nd!
Posted by: Bill Nevins | November 27, 2022 at 11:01 AM
Love the thought of Old Iron Butt and the corpses laughing. Pass the water, please. The unforgiving sun made me thirsty. Another wonderful selection.
Posted by: Doug Pell | November 27, 2022 at 11:13 AM
Rooney makes me care more about the West than I did before, because she transforms it into something I can understand. And, as usual, the art displayed fills the belly.
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | November 27, 2022 at 11:15 AM
Doug: Thanks for the comment
Posted by: Terence Winch | November 27, 2022 at 11:42 AM
Grace: thanks for tuning in.
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Rooney makes me care more about the West than I did before, because she transforms it into something I can understand. And, as usual, the art displayed fills the belly.
Commenter name: Grace Cavalieri
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Posted by: Terence Winch | November 27, 2022 at 11:44 AM
another delightful poem that engaged and entertained me on a sunday morning, keep'em comin' terence and kathleen
Posted by: lally | November 27, 2022 at 12:18 PM
Terence, you picked the greatest line! One wee cavil: is there a word missing from “don’t at me”?
Posted by: Clarinda | November 27, 2022 at 12:20 PM
Michael: thanks for the comment.
Posted by: Terence Winch | November 27, 2022 at 12:26 PM
Wonderful observations about the Western, about which I am writng something now, which makes me all the more apprecuiative of such gems as "Bemused fatalism may be the most effective bravado."
Posted by: David Lehman | November 27, 2022 at 12:51 PM
Love the impulse to record thought while in the act of watching--like the great wonder over those guys drinking so much water, something we flash back to and almost check to see if we ourselves had thought something in similar terms. Terrific illustration at the bottom that gives the poem even more force.
Posted by: Don Berger | November 27, 2022 at 01:48 PM
Great poem. “The best revenge is not living well; it’s simply not wanting revenge to begin with” - powerful.
Posted by: Eileen | November 27, 2022 at 04:51 PM
Kathleen Rooney -- Your Western swings. ! Thanx to you and Terence
Posted by: Jack Skelley | November 27, 2022 at 05:44 PM
Great fun in this. As if Rooney has passed out 3-D glasses to reveal the wrys we missed imbedded in the iconics of our Westerns
Posted by: Michael Whelan | November 27, 2022 at 06:06 PM
Thanks for the comment, Jack.
Posted by: Terence Winch | November 27, 2022 at 06:40 PM
Really good poem.
Posted by: Susan Campbell | November 27, 2022 at 07:14 PM
More movie criticism should be written as poetry. And vice versa.
Posted by: Geoffrey Himes | November 28, 2022 at 08:44 AM
To cite only a small part of Ms Rooney's engaging, wide-ranging poem, she follows up her opening line very nicely. She names the Revisionist Western "Unforgiven" and peppers her work with two Spaghetti Westerns: "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," including the Mexican standoff scene of the closing lines, and "Fistful of Dollars." The unnamed unifying thread in this collectiom? Clint Eastwood, director and star of "Unforgiven" and star in both Spaghetti Westerns.
Posted by: Peter Kearney | December 01, 2022 at 02:01 AM