Colo-State-Penn: 18456
A Dark Miscellany, by W.K. Stratton
Here is volume three in the Dreaming Sam Peckinpah Quintet (earlier entries are Dreaming Sam Peckinpah and Ranchero Ford/Dying in Red Dirt Country). The poems and prose deal with pain, sorrow, regret, disillusion, history, family breakdown, and Western landscapes. The title piece of Colo—State—Pen: 18456 is an epic-length poem dealing with Stratton's grandfather, a life-long criminal who served a prison at the Colorado State Penitentiary. In other pieces, Stratton increasingly turns his gaze to la frontera, the border between Texas and Mexico, and the Desert Southwest. Many of the pieces deal with the record of men mistreating women in abhorrent ways, one of the worst offenders being Stratton's grandfather. As with Stratton's previous books, oilfield roughnecks, bootleggers, brawlers, and outlaws turn up. Colo—State—Pen: 18456, A Dark Miscellany is a dirge for lives gone astray.
Order from any bookstore, local or online. This title is also available from Fleur Fine Books of Galveston, Texas.
About the Author
William Kip Stratton—friends call him by his middle name—is a native of the West. He has called Texas home for most of his life and currently lives in Austin. He put himself through what’s now known as the University of Central Oklahoma while working as a newspaper reporter, taking a degree in English with honors. He later received a master’s degree in English from the same school, submitting a novel for his thesis. He spent several years working on newspapers. He also wrote for magazines on the side.
His first book, Backyard Brawl, appeared in 2002. Chasing the Rodeo followed in 2005, as did Splendor in the Short Grass, a book he edited with his longtime friend Jan Reid. That year he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. In 2009, he published Boxing Shadows, about Anissa Zamarron’s rise from a troubled adolescence to prominence in women’s boxing. In 2011, his book of poetry, Dreaming Sam Peckinpah, was published to acclaim. Floyd Patterson: The Fighting Life of Boxing’s Invisible Champion was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012. Also in 2012, Stratton was elected President of the Texas Institute of Letters.
In 2015, his second book of verse, Ranchero Ford/Dying in Red Dirt Country, was published. The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film, about the classic American movie The Wild Bunch and its director, Sam Peckinpah, was published in 2019.