Red Steagall: New and Selected Poems

Introduction

I n t r odu c t ion The abilities of Red Steagall the musician, both in performance and songwriting, are generally known. His poetry is not as well known because poetry is, in our age, not as popular as song. That is not to say that he does not have a readership; he has a number of poetry books and is the current Texas Poet Laureate. Readers have noticed his gift for storytelling and his first-hand knowledge of the American West. Perhaps, Red Steagall: New and Selected Poems will help a larger readership understand the other good qualities of his writings. His poems have their roots in a number of traditions. For one, he crafts verse in the tradition of cowboy songs, not a surprising fact when one considers that he is a musician and a cowboy, if a cowboy with a college degree. But in “The Memories in Grandmother’s Trunk,” Steagall goes beyond his ranching days and backward in time into ancestral memory. They came in a wagon from St. Jo, Missouri. Grandmother was seven years old. I remember she said she walked most of the way Through the rain, and the mud, and the cold. She saw the Comanche. They came into camp— Not the savage she’d seen in her dreams. They were ragged and pitiful, hungry, and cold Begging for salt pork and beans. -01- He is hardly the first Texan to blend regional folk art with artistic poetry. Although some meaningful differences exist between Red Steagall’s body of work and that of Laurence Chittenden, one reminds me of the other. I would guess that Grace Noll Crowell, who served as the Texas Poet Laureate in our Centennial year, sold more poetry books than any other Texan in history. I would then guess that Laurence Chittenden would place second with Ranch Verses. After moving from his native New Jersey, Larry Chittenden (1862-1934) wrote poems while riding herd on his uncle’s ranch along the Old McKenzie Trail. Chittenden became nationally known as “The Poet Ranchman,” and Putnam and Sons reprinted Ranch Verses fifteen times. Steagall’s poetry collections also remind me of other Southwestern books. Chittenden’s Ranch Verses was first published in 1893. Editor and folksongcatcher , John A. Lomax first published his anthology, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads in 1910. It was through this scholarly songbook that many Americans became aware of “Git Along, Little Dogies” and “Home on the Range.” I see a similar authenticity in Red Steagall’s poetry, playing off of oral tradition. In 1950, folklorist and novelist William A. Owens published Texas Folk Songs. This compilation included old ballads, some of which had traveled across the American Plains and some across the Atlantic West. Along with “Come, All Young Cowboys,” one finds “The Oxford Girl,” whose melody and lyrics predate the Mayflower. In the introduction to Texas Folk Songs, William Owens explains: “Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-American, Anglo-Texan; each of these terms is an extension of the preceding—one parent to another, just as European is parent to all three…” -02- People of Celtic heritage are not often thrilled with being classified as Anglo. Fort Worth writer, Joyce Gibson Roach, who knows Red Steagall better than I do, more clearly defines this lineage: Celtic stock—the Irish and the Scots—all but raced for the wilds of the frontier. In no group was the folk singing, poetry reciting, and tale telling penchant stronger than in descendants of the ancient Celts who moved into the South and then by wagon, horseback, and afoot to Texas and beyond. Red Steagall (Steagall is an Irish name, although it isn’t fair, perhaps, to make too much of it) by genetics, interest, and disposition, recites and sings a modern version of an ancient form. The singers and poets before Red did the same. To me, given this literary line, Steagall’s work is reminiscent of that of Robert Burns. In the poems of the beloved Scot, one finds use of dialect, a fluctuation between poetry and song, a flowing conversational charm, a sense of whimsy, and a sense of place. There is something in “McCorkle and the Wire” that calls up “Tam O’Shanter.” As with Robert Burns, the Texas Poet Laureate echoes oral tradition within his personal art. The other evening, I watched a PBS documentary about ranch life in Texas, and Red Steagall served as...