A life lived on the road. A country seen from the ground up. A heart shaped by music, memory, and miles.
In First We Shoot the Poets, O. W. Walker gathers decades of songs, stories, and lived experience into a collection that moves with the rhythm of a long highway and the weight of a well-worn guitar. These poems travel from Texas honky-tonks to South American plazas, from war-shadowed childhoods to the quiet truths of middle age.
With a voice that's equal parts songwriter, storyteller, and witness, Walker writes about the things that stay with us - love, loss, faith, grit, ghosts, and the strange beauty of the American road.
This is poetry with dirt under its nails and starlight in its eyes. A book for anyone who's ever carried a song in their pocket and a memory they couldn't shake.