About the Poems - MT
About the Poems
by Maureen Thorson These poems have their origin in words or phrases plucked at random from a 1937 western novel by William MacLeod Raine, Bucky Follows a Cold Trail. I've written about 12 poems based on this book, but because I'm only opening it up at random and skimming for interesting words, I still haven't much idea of the plot: Bucky solving murders? Bucky avenging a lady? All I know is there's a lot of sagebrush and dialogue inspired not so much by the Old West as by movies about it. And so these poems are not inspired so much by the book as by its ambience: mustaches and dust and occasional bursts of gunfire.