'Reckon' takes a look back at memories of 1980s and '90s Tombstone

In his new memoir “Reckon,” poet Logan Phillips plays with form in a variety of ways.

The book weaves together Phillips’ poetry, prose, old photographs, newspaper clippings, restaurant ads and more, creating a pastiche of life in 1980s and 1990s Tombstone, where Phillips grew up. It’s a project that plays with how and why certain memories are preserved at the expense of others.

Phillips recently spoke with The Show and began by reading a passage from the book.

Full conversation

LOGAN PHILLIPS: History is an old theater. Turned museum turned replica desert evening. Where kid me steps on a hidden switch and a coyote calls from a tape loop. History auto rewinds unseen beneath a fiberglass boulder. Backstage in the archive, history is just what dad did. Taught himself to build exhibits, how to spell letter by letter the text given to him: taxonomy, taxidermy, hawk, skunk, rattlesnake, den, who, won, what, war, when. History is not what happened but how it is told on take your son to work day

SAM DINGMAN: Thank you for reading that. It expresses a couple of things that it seems to me you're playing with in this book. Among them, a very poetic tone and writing style, and also this larger idea of Tombstone and maybe the West more broadly as a kind of hybrid environment, both a real place where people have lives and are raised, but also there's this way in which history has transformed them into a kind of stage set.

PHILLIPS: Absolutely. You know, and what's so interesting about that is that it was happening, you know, at the time that the quote unquote history was made, right?

The story of the place preceded the creation of the place in some ways, right? Stories of silver, of treasure, of these things. And that continues today with the myth-making about the past that obscures or emphasizes certain aspects of it.

DINGMAN: Yes. Well, and one of the other ways that you accomplish this in addition to the poetic writing is you have all of these really amazing newspaper clippings from the Tombstone Epitaph. And also there's like restaurant ads and I think some brochures may be in there, all of which reinforce the nature and tone of the stories that are told about Tombstone, by the residents of Tombstone and the way that local restaurants and tourist attractions kind of play on these myths of the West.

What was interesting to you about weaving those materials in to kind of buttress your own recollections?

PHILLIPS: We're never writing without context, right? We're surrounded by our lived experience, but also by all of the work that is happening around us at the same time. You know, in newspaper, to me, this, in some ways, this book is a celebration of newspaper. The Tombstone Epitaph local edition that was published throughout this period in the 1980s and 1990s was actually a student project from students at the University of Arizona who spent an incredible amount of time and effort being in Tombstone and reporting on local news.

And, you know, the depth that they reached in these editions, you know, rivals some of the best local reporting that we see today. And so it's, you know, hearkening back to this time when communities really had the opportunity to tell their own stories and people's lives were seen as noteworthy, not just for their controversies.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask you about one particular juxtaposition that I found quite moving in the book. This is from sort of early on. And you have printed next to each other a letter to the editor from somebody named Billy Maler. And then next to that, you have a Xerox, it looks like, of a document that you wrote it looks like for school in 1992. And the letter from Billy Maler reads, in part:

“Dear editor, I'm writing to you in the hopes that you will have the kindness in your heart to place my letter in your newspaper in hopes someone who might be kind to me will write me back.”

And I'm skipping ahead a little bit here, but then he continues, “I have never felt so lonely in my whole life and so sad. I don't have anyone to write to.”

And then next to that, we have your writing, again from 1992, when you were a kid, and among other things, you write: “I feel needed here. I am happy here. I am free, free, free.”

What was interesting to you about putting those two pieces next to each other?

PHILLIPS: One of the ways that poetry gains energy is through the action of juxtaposition and the energy generated by contradiction. And, you know, going to metaphor, the two halves of a metaphor, what's interesting is kind of the third thing that results from those two pieces.

And so to me, some of that happens, you know, in a way that I can't really intellectualize. It's part of the creative process where these things kind of appear or present themselves, and there's something happening there that I don't quite understand myself. And so it's, you know, a real interesting thought experiment to think about, you know, the different paths that lives take and how they might intersect, you know, at a moment, in a place, in a time.

DINGMAN: OK, that makes sense. And I mean, I guess what that made me think about looking at those two things together was this sense of Tombstone, in some ways having such a clear identity. You know, this is the place where the famous gunfight happened. This is the place of kind of cowboy identity.

But that clearly the truth, as it always is, of what that can mean for people, that can either feel like something that includes them or excludes them. And that makes me think about another passage from the book I was hoping to have you read. This is from a chapter called “Hey There, Cowboy.”

And in part, what you're doing in this passage is reacting to this old image of a guy in a cowboy hat, squatting down. He's got a cigarette in his left hand. He's got a can of what looks like beer in his left hand. And you're writing about just being very compelled by this image in ways you can't fully express.

PHILLIPS: Yeah, that does present it real well. And that's another photo from that same edition of the newspaper. And so that newspaper that my mom had saved really became kind of a lens or a kaleidoscope to look at my life through. So I was kind of writing to all the different images and articles and things, but I'll go ahead and read the section here.

DINGMAN: Yeah.

PHILLIPS: My queerness is like my cowboyness. It's just there. I don't need to always wear my boots to have been born in Tombstone. So many people I love hold their queerness central to their identities, and I get it. I love it. Be visible and unapologetic and let people just get cut looking. But do I get to call myself queer? I mean, I'm partner to a person who also questions the assumptions of being called a woman. We have kids. I'm a young father. I pass. I rarely get called out on the street. Most of the men I've loved were beyond my reach. So just who do I think I am? There's so many lines in the sand. I don't know what to tell you other than I want to buy that man a beer.

SAM DINGMAN: Well, I have been speaking with Logan Phillips, the author of "Reckon," a memoir which is a hybrid, as we've been discussing, of personal narrative, poetry, and mixed media. And he will be at Changing Hands, the Tempe location, on Feb. 25. Logan, thank you for this conversation.

PHILLIPS: Thanks so much for having me, Sam.