Todd Moore & Lawrence Welsh

aaaaaaIn the annals of American poetry, Todd Moore is an anomaly. The author of more than 100 books and chapbooks during the past 40 years, he’s both known and unknown at the same time. In fact, Moore is regarded as a legend in the underground and renegade press circles, yet no university or mainstream press has touched his work, except for a few well-regarded anthologies.

aaaaaaWhat’s needed now, then, is a selected poetry by a major press with wide distribution. There’s no poet in America more deserving. Until that time, however, we’re lucky enough to get a new, large chunk of his work with The Riddle of the Wooden Gun, which Lummox Press published earlier this year.

aaaaaaAs a new installment in his 35-year-old Dillinger epic, Riddle is a first-rate romp into the heart and soul of the American dream. It’s a dream that’s so close to actuality that it’s eerie in its portentousness and its real-life dramas. But the wooden gun, which sometimes exists in reality, is also a ghost or spirit that no one can fully pin down.

aaaaaaFor the gun shows up, disappears and then appears in another’s memory or world. In a sense, then, it seems like we’ve all owned a wooden gun or have possessed one in our life. It can take shape as a dead relative, a lousy job, a gone girlfriend, a dead lover, a drinking or dope curse, a lemon for a car. In Moore’s world, they’re all metaphors for wooden guns:

“wish i knew
whatever
became of
the wooden
gun my
daddy sd
it got burnt
in a house
fire down
in kentucky…”

aaaaaaThe gun also inhabits and serves as a symbol for the spirit world – both the dark and light realms — and can switch in another’s memory or fantasy into a talisman or trickster as important as an ancient crucifix or medicine pipe. In this sense, the reader sees how New Mexico, the land of enchantment, has affected Moore and slipped under his skin during his life there the past 15 years. For no other state in America is as infused with ancient Christianity, Native American blood and new age alchemy as New Mexico:

“it was the
wooden
gun that
had every
one edging
back toward
the wall
some kind
of black
energy was
twisting
off the wooden
gun &
just hanging
in the
air…”

aaaaaaAt the same time, the wooden gun also inhabits the world of light, healing and hope, almost like a miracle worker, prophet or saint:

“she sd
it was
good luck
to touch
& wd
heal any
sores
or wounds
& she
wanted
dillinger
to have it…”

aaaaaaBut the real heart of this first-rate book is the knowledge that there’s no end to the wooden gun, that it remains with the reader as an endless quest for what? Salvation, damnation, protection, a joke, a ruse, a shield? Perhaps none or all of the above. In essence, that’s the riddle.

aaaaaaIn the end, it’s all impossible to nail down, like a meditation session or prayer cycle; impossible to fully quantify but still essential for living, like air or water or bone — or not important at all. It’s up to the reader to decide. As one anonymous old timer tells us:

“wooden gun
stories i
got a million
of em
which one
wd you like
to hear…”

aaaaaaFor Todd Moore, the answer is, of course, every single one of them, mainly because Moore is an obsessed writer who has taken obsession into a life-changing journey. And the obsession is not only with Dillinger here and a wooden gun, but the relentless search and dedication to develop a one-of-a kind, bullet-proof voice in American poetry and letters. This obsession, which he has lived for 40 years, has significantly paid off. The Riddle of the Wooden Gun is a masterpiece.

aaaaaaNow what our nation needs is a 500 page selected poems of Todd Moore. Until that time, it’s the reader’s job to seek him out, to uncover the richness and to discover that Moore, along with the wooden gun, “are the / stuff that / dreams are / made of.”

some related articles are listed below:

1. todd moore | dillinger and the riddle of the wooden gun
2. lawrence welsh | outlaw waiting
3. todd moore | rd armstrong | reads
4. lawrence welsh | skull highway
5. todd moore & Lawrence welsh | poetry reading
6. todd moore | dillinger was
7. lawrence welsh | notes from a punk survivor
8. todd moore | the coyote trickster and the wooden gun
9. lawrence welsh | a savage refinement: the art of bill rakocy
10. todd moore | leaving a little blood on the floor
11. todd moore | stealing dillinger, becoming an outlaw
12. todd moore | all the way to the fame
13. rd armstrong | todd moore and lummox press
14. todd moore | the blood of america
15. todd moore | when…
16. john dorsey & s.a. griffin | the dead zone trilogy by todd moore
17. todd moore | the machine gun blood of the poem
18. todd moore | the dillinger convergence: three ways of dreaming the outlaw
19. todd moore | the name is dillinger
20. tony moffeit | shaking the bones
21. todd moore | love & death & teeth in the blood
22. tony moffeit | a revolution of consciousness: review on dead reckoning by todd moore
23. todd moore | dillinger stood…
24. todd moore | the second
25. todd moore | this
26. todd moore | the treehouse reading
27. todd moore | fucking
28. todd moore | the shattered hemingway sentence
29. todd moore | mythic blood, psychic movies, outlaw dreams
30. todd moore | coyote death mask outlaw
31. todd moore | the great american poem
32. todd moore | I work the shattered line
33. todd moore | i want it all and i want it now
34. todd moore | american metaphors, visions, and nightmares
35. todd moore | the sentences are burning
36. todd moore | outlaw bonfires and dillinger’s blood
37. todd moore | blood and fate under mad stars
38. bill nevin | todd moore, cinematic poet on the outlaw’s trail
39. todd moore | dillinger, outlaws, writing, and murder
40. todd moore | i don’t want
41. todd moore | the long way home and the blood on the floor
42. todd moore | danger beyond danger, where the outlaw lives
43. todd moore | nightmare splender
44. todd moore | dillinger, the coyote, and the wolf
45. todd moore | working on my duende
46. todd moore | the dark country
47. todd moore | machine guns, movies, culture, dreams
48. todd moore | i’ll play dillinger
49. todd moore | working the outlaw wind
50. todd moore | play it & judy christopher
51. todd moore | taking on bukowski
52. todd moore | the murder and the ecstasy of the everlasting dream
53. todd moore | the perfect
54. todd moore | the question
55. todd moore | hemingway
56. todd moore | the old man’s waiting
57. todd moore | dillinger, death, and the high mountain air
58. todd moore | gimme danger
59. todd moore | how come
60. todd moore | what are the stakes in american poetry?
61. bone | poetry by todd moore & rd armstrong
62. todd moore | just
63. todd moore | hustling for drinks, praying for lines
64. todd moore | the last good reading from the outlaw dark
65. todd moore | falling in love with danger
66. todd moore | falling asleep in outlaw country
67. todd moore | burning the…
68. todd moore | the volcanic death song of baby face nelson
69. todd moore | reading the dark
70. todd moore | we cut
71. todd moore | stealing the fire, stealing the shadow
72. todd moore | the nightmare of poetry is war
73. todd moore | scorched trinity: dillinger, billie, and machine gun love
74. todd moore | what’s
75. todd moore | gary goude | blood on blood
76. todd moore | i write in the blood
77. todd moore | writing dillinger in the eye of the hurricane
78. todd moore | blood calls to blood
79. todd moore | dynamite
80. todd moore | blind whiskey and the straight razor blues
81. todd moore | outlaw poetry, psychic damage, the survival of wounds
82. todd moore | parker shot
83. todd moore | living at the movies with dillinger and depp
84. todd moore | coming out of…
85. todd moore | jerry’s old
86. todd moore | dancing in the fire with s.a. griffin
87. todd moore | walking around in the blood
88. todd moore | lucky
89. todd moore | damage, genius, courage
90. todd moore | saturday night desperate, don winter, and the black mitten of poetry
91. todd moore | dave roskos, the editor’s editor
92. todd moore | the outlaw poet and those killer eyes
93. todd moore | patrick mckinnon and the drunken shamanic
94. todd moore | writing poetry, burning the house
95. todd moore | tyler’s
96. todd moore | how to survive the coming night: the poetry of john yamrus
97. todd moore | the rat’s blood had glued my hand shut
98. todd moore | cold fire, molten ice
99. todd moore & john macker
100. todd moore | dreaming the dream, paying the price
101. todd moore | writing with your wounds: a reading of the broken and the damned by jason hardung
102. todd moore | the central avenue rundown jazz radio show
103. todd moore | burning
104. todd moore | dying with dillinger in the corpse is dreaming
105. todd moore | a conversation with raindog
106. todd moore | billy the kid in the theater of blood
107. todd moore
108. todd moore | all the dark talking to the angel of death
109. todd moore | geeshie wiley
110. todd moore | the nightmare talking
111. todd moore | the last good movie I made was a poem
112. todd moore | and the gunfight at dodge city
113. todd moore | everything changes when dillinger arrives
114. todd moore | reading the movies, watching the poems
115. todd moore | that terrible shaking in the blood
116. todd moore | outlaw poetry
117. todd moore | the exalted scar and the annointed cure
118. todd moore | machine guns, guernica, and the outlaw poem
119. todd moore | road testing the kid
120. todd moore | outlaw
121. todd moore | dillinger posed
122. todd moore | instructions for reading dead reckoning
123. todd moore | death rides the blood
124. todd moore | the fever of writing
125. todd moore | shadow of the outlaw
126. todd moore | largo slapped
127. todd moore | into the open madness: the poetry of kell robertson
128. todd moore | the fevers and sweats of the nightmare poem
129. todd moore | what I want to know
130. wolfgang carstens | todd moore | boom
131. todd moore | going to meet the outlaw
132. lawrence goeckel | three christmas still lifes
133. todd moore | pure blood primal: the poetry of kell robertson
134. todd moore | gary goude and that crushed rotting dawg
135. todd moore | the dark side of america
136. todd moore | jack wilson
137. todd moore | fighting death for the poem
138. todd moore | the blood of the poet
139. todd moore | just before
140. todd moore | shotgun blues
141. alex gildzen | street of poets tucson
142. todd moore | washed in the blood of the outlaw moon
143. todd moore | scratching it out street level for the poem
144. todd moore | nightmare frenzy
145. mera wolf & todd moore | read
146. todd moore | the gold cane, van gogh’s ear, and the gun in the casket: wandering down this crooked road
147. todd moore | las montanas de santa fe: visions of the spirit country
148. todd moore | chasing jack micheline’s shadow
149. todd moore | crudely mistaken for life: the books of wounds
150. todd moore | black rain
151. todd moore | doing shots with ben smith in air à boire
152. todd moore | glistening with blood | a bellyfull of anarchy by rob plath
153. tony moffeit | a man on fire
154. todd moore | the sea, the poem, and the house of all possible myths: the poetry of milner place
155. todd moore | the sign of the outlaw
156. todd moore | the nightmare of reading
157. tony moffeit | american blues outlaw poetry anarchic dream
158. todd moore | what haunted
159. todd moore | inventing the nightmare
160. todd moore | love, longing, dillinger, disaster
161. todd moore | dillinger stepped
162. todd moore | stories, ashes, and fire
163. todd moore | night blood, red hands
164. todd moore | the bank…
165. mark weber | for todd moore’s birthday party
166. todd moore | devouring the shadow
167. wolfgang carstens | for todd moore
168. todd moore | tasting the blood
169. todd moore | the house
170. kell robertson | the goofy goddess on the wall
171. todd moore & dennis gulling | shotgun weather
172. tony moffeit | scorching the darkness: the channeling of dillinger