Johnny Ringo

"Johnny Ringo," an epic biographic poem about the Old West gunfighter, by two-time Spur Award-winning poet Red Shuttleworth, sheds brilliant light on bloody historical events, from Ringo's exclusion from the James-Younger gang to mindless violence in Texas, from accidental fame brought on by dime novels to his spiral into ambition-fueled alcoholism and to employment of his great gift for self-destruction. Shuttleworth's Johnny Ringo paints a vivid, pinpoint-present portrait of a man who was charismatic and larger-than-life, a murderous psychotic to be feared, a spiritually ill man more than a few women wanted to save, a legend who wished to be a god.