So yesterday I was watching AMC’s rendition of “Cowboys at Christmas,” a marathon of Westerns, and came to realize that Kiefer Sutherland’s portrayal of Josiah Gordon “Doc” Scurlock in the 80’s masterpiece Young Guns is one of the finest depictions of a poet in the history of cinema.
Never mind the question of why someone would air cowboy movies all day on Christmas, or why someone would watch cowboy movies all day on Christmas; never mind Kiefer’s recent legal trouble (he spent XMAS in the hooskow), or the fact that there is a website named http://www.kiefer-rocks.com/ (where the above photo comes from); this new development is huge for the annals of poetry history.
All too often the public has a conception of poets as pale and sickly, yet Sutherland’s character in Young Guns must have killed about 438,000 people before the end of the movie. Even though I am a diehard Young Guns fan, I’d forgotten that Doc was a poet in the film.
The following exchange, with Doc’s love interest Yen Sun is likely one of the best regarding poets and poetry to ever grace the silver screen:
Never mind the question of why someone would air cowboy movies all day on Christmas, or why someone would watch cowboy movies all day on Christmas; never mind Kiefer’s recent legal trouble (he spent XMAS in the hooskow), or the fact that there is a website named http://www.kiefer-rocks.com/ (where the above photo comes from); this new development is huge for the annals of poetry history.
All too often the public has a conception of poets as pale and sickly, yet Sutherland’s character in Young Guns must have killed about 438,000 people before the end of the movie. Even though I am a diehard Young Guns fan, I’d forgotten that Doc was a poet in the film.
The following exchange, with Doc’s love interest Yen Sun is likely one of the best regarding poets and poetry to ever grace the silver screen:
YEN SUN: You must like trouble.
DOC: Trouble? You think I look like... trouble. I'm a poet... carrying flowers of all things.
YEN SUN: And a gun. A big gun.
DOC: It's a big town.
This was enough to convince me that all poets should carry weapons. Any of you poets reading this out there in cyberspace, please bring this up as a motion at the upcoming AWP convention.
Today I am working on the beginnings of a painting and debating which story idea to follow next for a fiction piece I am working on. And praising the Patron Saint of Poets, Doc Scurlock.
This was enough to convince me that all poets should carry weapons. Any of you poets reading this out there in cyberspace, please bring this up as a motion at the upcoming AWP convention.
Today I am working on the beginnings of a painting and debating which story idea to follow next for a fiction piece I am working on. And praising the Patron Saint of Poets, Doc Scurlock.
No comments:
Post a Comment