Colo-State-Pen: 18456: A Dark Miscellany

W.K. Stratton’s ‘Colo–State–Pen: 18456, A Dark Miscellany’ 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.