Letters from Elko by Scott Preston (review)

280 Western American Literature I Am Not a Cowboy. By Paul Zarzyski. Art by Larry Pimie. (Lemon Cove, California: Dry Crik Press, 1995. 39 pages, $50.00/$17.95/$150.00 [artist’s edi­ tion].) This slim but pricey collection of Zarzyski’s poems, with bold black-andwhite illustrations by his artistic partner and a Magritte-like title (on a cover dominated by a Pimie portrait of a cowboy, apparently Zarzyski), is, as the author notes in his “Polish-Hobo-Rodeo-Poet Prologue,” “a ‘conundrum’.” That is, “it’s not only not ‘cowboy,’ it’s not noncowboy”—and so on. Whatever it’s not, it surely is the engaging product of collaborators who decided “to shake our imaginations for the chutegate and let things get wild-in-woolies out in the big sagebrush open.” They succeeded. The book carries the reader through a range of moods, from western American cowboy kick-ass (“Luck of the Draw” and “Hip-cocked Broncs”) to eastern European somber (“Shoes”) to Hunter Thompson manic (“Flat Crick’s Mad Gourmet Poet & His Fishing Fanatic Neighbor Hold the First-ever Polecatting Derby”) to non-cowboy weepy-rapturous (“I Am Not a Cowboy”). My favorite is “Snapshot of Grandpa Frank,” which has one of the most effec­ tive line-breaks in the volume (“the meanest man in Iron County—all hell/ breaking loose around him”), wry humor (involving blasting caps and leather), vivid figures of speech (like “hands wide as welder’s mitts,/ feet like anvils”), and a poignant final line (“even while cirrhosis took him slow”). Second place goes to “Luck of the Draw,” where Zarzyski’s ear seems at its best. The book suffers from distracting shifts of typeface, and there’s too much self-consciousness once in a while; but plenty of good work fills these pages in language frequently colorful, at times startlingly precise, and always performable . MICHAEL L. JOHNSON University of Kansas Letters from Elko. By Scott Preston. (Lemon Cove, California: Dry Crik Press, 1994. 40 pages, $5.00.) I take this pen in hand to consider Scott Preston’s Lettersfrom Elko, a hand­ some chapbook whose cover resembles an envelope and whose poems are writ­ ten as letters and titled to individuals—shadd, john, rod, teresa, hank, and so on. The person in this book I know is “curt,” Mr. Curt Brummett from Maljamar, New Mexico, just down the road an hour or so from my home in the southeastern part of the state. Curt is a cowboy humorist who tells a pretty good story and who has been going to Elko, Nevada, for several years to participate in the cowboy gathering held there each year. Reviews 281 In his informal, letter-style poem about my friend, Preston offers Curt some suggestions for conduct at future gatherings, where poets, singers, and story­ tellers do a great deal of reading, reciting, singing, and storytelling in a short period of time. First, Preston tells Curt to “shift from whiskey . . . to chamomile tea.. . . ” I called up my friend to see if he had taken the advice, and he said he did not know how to pronounce the stuff and wouldn’t drink it even if he could pronounce it. When he drinks tea with his chicken fried steaks, he prefers Lipton over ice, which is how tea is supposed to be consumed. Second, Preston writes, “stay in bed at least a few hours every night. . . .” Well, Curt does that, but I’ll bet he’s not sleeping while he’s there. Third, Preston recommends avoiding country and western music and listen­ ing to Mozart and Schubert. Say who? Did they used to front for Willie Nelson? Finally, in lines and stanzas Preston writes that he hopes Curt “dreamed a perfect cowboy Kubla Khan/ all the way home to New Mexico.” Mr. Preston needs to know that Curt won’t have anything to do with Mongols, especially those from some sorry little state in the backwoods of the Orient. Preston’s poems are very personal, with references and allusions about which only he and the friend from Elko would know. They are also very prose­ like. Finally, they are written more as revelations of the self than...