In 1977 Sam Peckinpah, the writer and director, bought a plot of land in a remote part of Montana and had a cabin constructed. It was more a dream than a practical place for him to live, and he spent most of his Montana years, especially after his heart attack, at the Murray Hotel in Livingston, where his suite of rooms has since been named in his memory.

In Paul Munden’s Peckinpah Suite (Recent Work Press, 2025), the poet checks into Peckinpah’s rooms and writes a sequence of poems addressed to the director, reflecting on his life and work.

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Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

A man who has nothing to do
with the narrative
drifts slowly downstream
on a ramshackle houseboat
in the half-light of dawn,
takes aim at a bottle afloat
ahead of him in the water

and misses. No way,
say the producers, their eye
on schedule and budget –
the imperative
of all-out thrills, not
The story of a man who
doesn’t want to run

being chased by a man
who doesn’t want to catch him.
So you order your crew
to steal away, film it in secret –
this beautiful, wild west
poem in which Garrett,
on the riverbank, is drawn

into the mindless target
practice and face-
off with the stranger. Later 
he will shoot first
his own former friend,
Billy the Kid,
then his own image

in a mirror, a scene
you’ve rehearsed
forever in your head.
You have a cameo
as the weary carpenter
preparing to bury the legend
itself. When the studio

takes all this footage
away from you
it’s both a sad crime
and fractured dream.
We do our best to piece 
together every last 
sliver of silvered glass.