Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 88

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The Popular Culture Review

The welding together of such polar opposites creates an
ambiguity essential to the work of both McDonald and ZZTop.
McDonald seems to be referring to this fusing of antithetical ideas in
his poem "The Picker Takes a Cold Ride to Austin." Instead of a lone
rider on horseback out in the hardscrabble, the speaker here is a
guitar picker riding a Harley, following his band to Austin after a one
night stand with a widow in Lubbock. Exhaustion, "greasy chicken
and french fries from Abilene," and snow flakes that sting "like the
widow’s kisses / after last night's gig" threaten to overcome the
speaker, but the thought of a new song keeps him going. "Might as
well pull over / coil up with a den of rattlers, / but I feel a new song
coming / and keep on straddling asphalt, / chasing sad words like
snow / swirling into my headlight." The last image —"sad words
like snow / swirling into my headlight" - suggests the moment when
poetry is achieved both for McDonald and for ZZTop. Cold white
snow coming together violently with the bright hot headlight of a
speeding motorcycle represents the seemingly impossible fusion of
words with images and attitudes which makes the work of McDonald
and ZZTop so unique. This almost violent welding together of
harshness and beauty is the local, the unique idiom that is Texas in
the music of ZZTop and the poetry of Walt McDonald.
University of North Texas

Michael Hobbs