Thursday, October 28, 2010
Billy the Kid
In my experience Billy the Kid is the ikon that most people from all over the world associate with Las Cruces and Mesilla. I find it ironic that this punk who was basically a murder has been commercialized so successfully in Mesilla and elsewhere into a harmless hero on a coffee cup. My piece juxtaposes images of this commercialized Kid with the current massacre that is going on just across the Rio Grande. There is also the amusing accident that Billy Garrett is now running for county commissioner (he is no relation to Pat Garrett who was commissioned to kill the Kid). I managed to distill a found poem from all these elements stirred in a pot.
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this sounds pretty cool Tim. I share your fascination with the Kid as well, and I'm sure you've read Ondjate's treatment fo the matter. I look forward to seeing your cut-up.
ReplyDeleteI happen to enjoy the Ondjate book quite a bit. Also, Peckinpah's take on the story, a western modeled after a passion play. It is easy, today, to dismiss Billy The Kid as a punk, or juvenile delinquent. Context is so important, and even in his milieu, Billy was many things to many people.
ReplyDeleteEvery generation seems to find a way to interpret Mr. Bonney in way that best conforms to the worries of the day. He's gone from a Dickensian scamp, to an All-American folk hero, to a troubled juvenile delinquent, to a counter-cultural icon, to a punk rock cowboy, to messianic rock star gunslinger, to a John Hughes desperado, and now, really, we don't seem to have an archetype to fit him in. I was surprised we didn't have a Billy as Dylan/Klebold shooter, or Billy as insurgent/terrorist tale in the last couple of decades.
Poetry wise, there is also Richard Brautigan's say on the matter:
I was sitting on a stool in the bookstore one afternoon
reading a book that was in the shape of a chalice. The book
had clear pages like gin, and the first page in the book read:
Billy
the Kid
born
November 23,
1859
in
New York
City