Pure Blood Primal: The Poetry of Kell Robertson

By: Todd Moore

Cowboy Poet, Kell Robertson, Outside Vesuvio’s Bar, North Beach, San Francisco, 2001. Photo by: A.D. Winans

I’m listening to Kell Robertson sing ‘When You Come Down Off The Mountain.’

His voice sounds like his throat has been sandblasted raw, gravel over gravel, bourbon through phlegm. The second he sings the line, Just remember, you gotta die, it hits me that this strikes right at the core of what Outlaw Poetry is really all about. Or, maybe any poetry that is worth a damn. It’s all about writing full throttle under the constant sentence of death. Or, at the very least, of being down and out in the american southwest.

Robertson sings almost everything off key or at least it’s off the key that I’m used to. Call it a Kell Robertson form of the duende. But, he more than makes up for it in the authenticity that he brings to the music. And, he more than makes up for it in the originality he brings to his poetry.

Kell Robertson has been writing poetry since the 1950s. Nobody knows just how much poetry he has written since then. The work that has survived his legendary walk and ride abouts in america, the poetry that survives in difficult to find chapbooks is small compared to the work of Bukowski, Micheline, or Ginsberg who were close contemporaries.

Robertson may have a published legacy of perhaps two hundred poems in all. Not much more than a Constantine Cavafy or a Weldon Kees.

In both published and unpublished interviews and private correspondence, Robertson has admitted that he considers himself lucky to write ten poems a year, if that.

Personally, I can write ten poems a day. But, that isn’t the point. The point here is the quality of the work that is produced. And, the quality of much of Robertson’s work is first rate. However, it isn’t just first rate. It’s unique. It’s extraordinary because it is so originally and wonderfully primitive.

And, here I used the word primitive as a compliment. When I say primitive, I also invoke the word primal. Because it is primal in the very best sense that any primal work of art is important.

A primal poem, like a primal painting calls down all the powers, conjures all the nightmares, completes the circuit for passion, longing, terror, and dreams. This is the area that Kell Robertson writes out of. This is where he has been. This is what he knows best.

Some careless critics have called Kell Robertson a Cowboy Poet and that really is about as wrong as it gets. Or, lets go this direction. If Kell Robertson is a Cowboy Poet, then he is the extreme dark side of Baxter Black. But, he’s not Baxter Black. Instead, Kell Robertson is an american original. You won’t find his like anywhere else in America.

Teresa

This morning Teresa sleeps
in the doorway of the plasma center.
Teresa of the rotten teeth
and sweet smile. Teresa
of diseased sex and raped dreams.
The cops can’t arrest her because
she’d infect the other prisoners
and no social service will touch her.
She blows winos for drinks of cheap wine
and screws anyone for a glass of beer.
and a quarter for the jukebox.
Her grin is black, the stumps
of her teeth framed by scarlet lipstick.
She told me once
how she wanted to dance
dance into the grave
with music coming out
of every hole in her body.

I don’t think Charles Bukowski or Jack Micheline or Ray Bremser could have written anything any better than this. Teresa is, in my opinion, one of Robertson’s perfect poems. There is not one false note, note one bad line in the whole text. It is just simply a masterpiece. The way that The Gunfighter is a masterpiece. The way that Pretty Boy Floyd is a masterpiece.

Almost twenty years ago I sat in Kell Robertson’s kitchen up in Raton, New Mexico. That was back in 1992 when he had an apartment and a kitchen. DILLINGER: BOOK ONE from Primal Publishing was on the table between us. I’d just written something in the copy for him.

I could tell that he was uneasy with it sitting there. He took a hit of vodka right out of the bottle, touched the book, then looked at me. The look was a mix of rage and pain and drunken envy. Suddenly he pushed the book toward me and said, Hell, you have John Dillinger and I have John Wesley Hardin.

Then he leaned forward nearly dumping the ashes out of an ashtray on the table. The book on Hardin’s all up here he said pointing at his eyes. I got it here but when it comes out, he paused. It’s really gonna be something.

All I gotta say is watch out. Then he settled back into his chair, took another hit of vodka, smiled and said, Lets get some guns, go down to Mexico.

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This article was originally published at Outlawpoetry. You can find more of Kell Robertson’s poetry and works at — kellrobertson.outlawpoetry.com