"blood a necklace on me all my life" ( )

Charlie knew he was already dead now, had to go somewhere, do something, to get his mind off the pain. Charlie went straight, now closer to them his hands covered the mess in his trousers. Shoot him Charlie shoot him. The blood trail he left straight as a knife cut. Getting there getting there. Charlie getting to the arroyo, pitching into Garrett's arms, slobbering his stomach on Garrett's gun belt. Hello Charlie, said Pat quietly.

The fascination with Billy the Kid is more fascinating than the man himself, really, but this is a very good example. I just wish more of it held up like the above quote. The time shifts work really well; the perspective shifts not so much. Also, there are some jarring anachronisms and inaccuracies. (Look, I never said I hadn't been one of the fascinated!) If it had stuck more with the pathos of the thing, I would have really loved this. Still, the poetry is very good. (The library is kicking me out but I'll come back and put a scrap in later.) And as ever, Pat Garrett is the most sympathetic person in any story about Billy the Kid, so it got that right. ( )

Interesting hybrid work of fiction, poetry, interview, etc. on the life of Billy the Kid. Refreshingly original and consistently engaging.

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. ( )

This is a portrait of Billy the Kid as reflected in a thousand pieces of a shattered mirror. The book is composed of vignettes, poems, photos, and fragments of prose, each of which is a little stroke of brilliance and all of which together paint an incredibly rich, violent, and moving portrait of this young man and his legend. Ondaatje is quite a conjurer here. ( )

I knew nothing about this book before I picked it up. I had recently read "In the Skin of a Lion" and that book left me dumb with awe. First few pages in and I'm thinking - Wow, William Bonney was quite a wordsmith. Avant-garde. 1/3 the way through and I'm thinking - hold on, what am I reading here? So then I look it up on Goodreads and figure out this is fiction. But not just any old fiction, it's poetry, and not just any old poetry. No shit!, I say to myself, this is GLORIOUS! It's indescribable, but I'll try anyway. Ondaatje inhabits Bonney. He becomes corporeal, alive, wet, dirty, brutal, and human. So very human. 2 for 2, Ondaatje has struck me dumb. ( )

The collected works of Billy the Kid (1970)
by Ondaatje, Michael

This brief work is a compilation of storytelling, history, and myth, about William Bonney, a.k.a. "Billy the Kid, " (1859-1881)

Speculative and fanciful, we're privy to Billy's "mind and motives" as he (Billy) narrates.

You'll find tall tales, poetry, prose, songs, photographs and eye witness accounts from the period.

Ondaatje reminds us of the work's design.
"I was fascinated by the mind and imagination and motive of someone like Billy ...
There was a need to create a world where Billy could breathe and act in total freedom."

Beautiful and surreal, phantasmagorical and beautifully visceral.

The prose sections of the book were much more interesting and enjoyable. The poetry, at times, seemed to try way to hard to be 'edgy' or 'strange' whereas the lumpy prose sections seem to tell the same odd stories in a more fitting, and effective, matter of fact style. Personally, I have never cared for Ondaatje's verse, but love his fiction, so that might be the reason for my appraisal.

Definitely a unique and interesting book, though my favorite part is probably Ondaatje's Afterword, where he describes the writing process he underwent. ( )

This book is a study of the American outlaw, Billy the Kid and weaves fact and fiction, poetry and prose to form a lyrical and violent story of what his life might have been like. An engrossing read, a book of contrasts with vivid imagery at once dreamlike and harshly realistic. ( )

This book for me was just ok. I found the style of writing to be disjointed. Maybe you just have to be more of a poetry lover than I am to enjoy the whole thing. There were some very enjoyable passages and short narratives but its all a little hard to follow. ( )

This is my favourite book in the world. This is the book I give copies of to people I adore. I read it for the first time as part of a university course in, I think, 1996, and it has only grown on me since. ( )

Made it about half way through. The book just did not connect with me. I did not believe it, hard as I tried. However, I am a big fan of the legend of Billy the Kid, but this work left me disappointed and adrift. After looking now at two of his books, it is clear I am not an Ondaatje fan even if he is an anointed one. ( )

I also just finished reading [The Collected Works of Billy the Kid] by [[Michael Ondaatje]] the day before yesterday. I think the charm of the book is that it evokes a kind of feeling, somewhere between romance, smut and violence, around a character little is known about for fact. I think everyone has heard of Billy the Kid, but no-one knows much about him or his story, and very little is known from reliable sources. Much of what appears to be known is just conjecture or legend. The book seems to operate well on that edge of the poetic imagination.

I did not find [The Collected Works of Billy the Kid] representable of [[Ondaatje]]s work. In the afterword it is explained that this was his first work, and is based on his youth fascination with the Wild West. ( )

Mr. Bonney's poetic interior monologues are a bit too well formed for this to ring true, but a great book nonetheless. I would give it more "stars" but I was never enamored with the American West. ( )

a profoundly interesting book. I enjoyed the prose more than the poetry, but the way it all came together was quite nice. ( )

As someone who's read most of Ondaatje's other works, I have to say that this one--except in rare moments--just doesn't measure up to the level. The experimentation here does work--between fact and fiction, legend and history, poetry and prose--as perhaps we'd expect it to for Ondaatje. And the language, as ever, is often both poetic and memorable, worth lingering over and rereading. What ends up being less successful and making the work fall short compared to Ondaatje's other works are the characterizations. Whether there are simply too many characters included here to support Ondaatje's usual focus on detail, or whether the more detached nature of the work simply pushes us too far from their individual beings within the book, the reader can't quite become connected to the figures here, and the story itself is too disjointed for that to provide a narrative drive. So, in the end, while I enjoyed various points of the work, it did leave me disappointed in comparison to Ondaatje's other works (poetry & prose), and there's no reason that I finished the work in one sitting, outside of length and convenience. Readers of Ondaatje will find moments here that are as masterful as ever, but shouldn't expect too much more than those moments, and entertaining scenes of legend to bring it all together. ( )

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a series of vignettes -- poems and prose poems -- that brutally brings the reader into the last year or so of Billy the Kid's life as he encounters, eludes and finally is killed by Pat Garrett. The descriptions of the New Mexico desert are unflinching as are the matter-of-fact accounts of those gunned down in the duel between the lawmen and the outlaws. We see Billy and Garrett in multiple views -- their own, each other's and from some of the women they encountered. It's a spare, but multi-layered account of survival on the edges of civilization where only amorality exists.

White walls neon on the eye
1880 November 23 my birthday

catching flies with my left hand
bringing the fist to my ear
hearing the scream grey buzz
as their legs cramp their heads with no air
so eyes split and release

open fingers
the air and sun hit them like pollen
sun flood drying them red
catching flies
angry weather in my head, too ( )

Rough, bloody, scorching, gorgeous poetry. ( )

William Bonney, otherwise known as Billy the Kid, was an infamous outlaw in the Old West. He killed his first man when he was twelve and died at twenty-one, an explosive life. In this collection of experimental poetry and poetry-prose, along with photographs and news reports, Ondaatje recreates the life of Billy the Kid from his own words.

An absolutely visceral piece of work. I went into it knowing near to nothing about Billy the Kid and his legend, but coming out of the work I feel like I’ve had a long conversation with him. I don’t know how close to the true Billy Ondaatje has come, if the personality quirks he’s captured are right, but I don’t think that’s really the point. Ondaatje’s language reveals an intelligent, thoughtful, doomed young man who has no regrets about what he has done, and whose everyday life is filled with such violence that it surprises me.

Ondaatje’s language is obviously the best part of the collection. His poetry is sharp and stinging, perfectly suiting his less than rosy subject. While those who are looking for a plot won’t find much of one, those who are looking for a bloody life told in searing verse will be certainly pleased. ( )

The only one of his books that I just don't get. ( )

An interesting fictionalized rendering of the life of the american outlaw Billy the Kid. Using photographs from the period, newspaper accounts, dime novels and remembrances of some of those who knew Mr. Bonney Ondaatje recreates the myth and legend of this one-man crime wave. Interspersed amid all of that at times is some remarkable Ondaatjian poetry. It's a short and unsentimental book--Ondaatje's first work of what you might call fiction (that I know of anyway) and gives of a very tangy southwestern flavor. Well worth reading. ( )