I'm a fan of Ondaatje and postmodern storytelling. However, I read "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid" to see and learn about Tom Romano's inspiration for multigenre projects. That's what Ondaatje's book is: a book of blended genres, some fiction, some history, some myth, some first person, some nonfiction, some prose, some poetry, some photography. All fascinating and original.

"His stomach was warm
remembered this when I put my hand into
a pot of luke warm tea to wash it out
dragging out the stomach to get the bullet
he wanted to see when taking tea
with Sallie Chisum in Paris Texas

With Sallie Chisum in Paris Texas
he wanted to see when taking tea
dragging out the stomach to get the bullet
a pot of luke warm tea to wash it out
remembered this when I put my hand into
his stomach was warm"



Who thought we could know Billy the Kid so intimately through poetry and photographs?...

I read this book years ago, and it is definitely one I won't forget. I love the legend of Billy the Kid, so to see it told through prose and candor and photographs was really interesting.A great Canadian read.

(Cue the Dylan soundtrack from the movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. A little scratchy, a little 'first-take'. Go sepia. Remember the first time you heard: Billy, you're so far away from home.)

Ondaatje was a kid in Sri Lanka -- a kid in Sri Lanka -- and he fell in love with the legend of Billy the Kid. Never kicked it. Then he started to write -- he had to write. He wrote a collage: of poems and poem fragments, prose, documentary testimonies. It's uneven, a broken western sky. But we're at the point where only impressionists can write Billy, who here says, Blood a necklace on me all my life.

This is a book where a dying man's last words are, indelibly, get away from me yer stupid chicken.

----- -----

Sallie had a cat that got bit by a rattler; was gonna die. They went to kill it, to put it out of its misery; but it jumped and fled. Ran under the house. Couldn't get it out, but imagined the pain. Billy said he'd kill him. You should read this to find out how. If you want to know.

----- -----

A poem:

You know hunters
are the gentlest
anywhere in the world

they halt caterpillars
from path dangers
lift a drowning moth from a bowl
remarkable in peace

in the same way assassins
come to chaos neutral

----- -----

To writers, Ondaatje says this:

/while I've been going on
the blood from my wrist
has travelled to my heart
and my fingers touch
the soft blue paper notebook
control a pencil that shifts up and sideways
mapping my thinking going its own way
like light wet glasses drifting on polished wood

----- -----

Billy was the pink of politeness and as courteous a little gentleman as I ever met. And yet, Even though dead they buried him in leg irons.

It's easy to be misunderstood.

----- -----

Dylan again, Billy, they don't like you to be so free.

----- -----

Get away from me yer stupid chicken.

I am not a poet, so my review should be tempered by that. While I appreciated Ondaatje's attempt to tell a historical tale in poetry and some poetic prose -- and there are some beautiful lines in it -- I found myself asking too often what was going on and why a communication that obscures rather than illuminates was the choice.

Brilliant!

I’m kind of upset this wasn’t my cup of tea, as it had everything I usually enjoy reading and writing about. History told through the lens of poetry is always something I want to pick up, and I dunno but this wasn’t something I think was for me.

Gorgeous, tortured prose.

3.5 fun concept but dark

One morning woke up
Charlie was cooking
and we ate not talking
but sniffing wind
wind so fine
it was like drinking ether

Of course it was Peckinpah and Zimmerman who delivered me here. This a lyrical treatment of the famed gunslinger. It utilizes interviews, prose poems and even pages of clipped meter. Perhaps this ideal territory for the poet Ondaatje? It might also be his best book as some here have speculated? It provides a curious tension of vistas, cordite and threadbare redemption. I’m reasonably certain that the story of dog breeding will haunt my psyche for years. Likewise the merciless thirst of many within these pages represents a cosmic affliction. Perhaps every reader will thus emerge as if they stepped out of a bandbox?

Fun! I’m a sucker for Billy stories.

I have wracked my brain, no joke - I actually whipped out a thesaurus in an attempt to find a word that might adequately describe Michael Ondaatje's Collected Works of Billy the Kid, but to no avail. I just don't think there is a word in the English language that would do it much justice. "Beautiful" or even "gorgeous" seem too dreary. No, Ondaatje's book of poems inspired by the infamous American outlaw is something else entirely. Writing from several perspectives, including that of Billy himself, Ondaatje completely transforms and retransforms himself so that he seems to have completely evolved into each character he is writing as. The content is so well-researched and so well-imagined at the same time, a fine line that Ondaatje manages to tread dead-on. Read this book and read it again. Read it forty times and it will ingnite new ideas in new places in you. You will love Billy, you will loathe Billy and you will grieve for Billy as if you knew him personally. That is just some of the magic that Ondaatje achieves. I was completely blown away.