Review: Sara Moore Wagner
On Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner
by Tyler Truman Julian
Sara Moore Wagner’s prizewinning collection Lady Wing Shot is an epic relaying of historic sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s life and an engaging interrogation of the larger myth of the American West. It belongs on the same shelf as the work of Alexandra Teague and Gabrielle Calvocoressi, masterful contemporary poets who engage with historic and academic myths to parse out American identity in our present moment. Lady Wing Shot boldly confronts the mythos of the American West through telling Oakley’s story—from her humble origins in the Ohio woods to her rise to international stardom. Wagner delves into the complexities of what is gained and lost when traditional gender roles are challenged, bringing Oakley's narrative into a modern context. This expands the critique of the romanticized notion of the West, moving it from the historical backdrop of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to the reader's own contemporary American experience.
Lady Wing Shot challenges the narrative expectations of poetry about the American West by centering a woman. This destabilization of the western narrative allows for a critical engagement with the myths of the West, giving Moore Wagner the poetic room to play with Oakley’s story across the collection. Two revealing poems clarify the feminist themes of the collection but are also persona poems, taking on Oakley’s voice. In “Annie Oakley on Marie Currie,” Oakley, as the speaker, dreams of a different world, saying,
Imagine a school where every girl has a book
and a gun, where the world gets undone like this—
We don’t know how to make a home worthy
of a man, because every single man is unworthy,
our own husbands, quiet worshippers of the ends
of our fingers.
Historically, Oakley did teach girls to shoot after her retirement from the Wild West Show. Poetically, this can be turned into a larger message of liberation. The challenge of the persona poem lies in the risk of appropriation, but through obvious research and poetic liberty Moore Wagner creates Oakley the character. Moore Wagner’s Oakley is mythic because of her historic and cultural status and already outside of myth because of the collection’s revisionist tilt, and writing in the persona mode works to draw attention to the challenges faced by women who resist traditional gender expectations in order to make a better life for themselves. Similarly, in “Childish, Envious, and Devious: Annie Oakley to Freud,” Oakley examines Sigmund Freud’s worldview and how it contributed to the amplification of societal flaws:
How did you love your mother? How often
did you see her undress in the late evening, not just take off
her clothes, but leave off her body, her gender a tight
ribbon on the finger—did she unwrap that? Because I am poor,
because my father left nothing but a gun, which is not indicative
of any longing in me—is not a phallic-shaped yearning for a father,
is a gun—how much did you love your mother? That perfect glass
of water pouring her own dreams into you, which you would
interpret for her.
These two poems cement the narrative in the worldview of the mid- to late-1800s, pointing to the conflict inherit in Annie Oakley’s lifestyle. Both poems highlight broader themes of societal misogyny and the enduring limitations faced by women, transcending historical context to resonate with a modern audience who inevitably interprets them through their own understanding of these issues.
Annie Oakley’s life as related by Moore Wagner is a performance, and Oakley’s skill with a firearm is commercialized. This gives her freedom, but this freedom has its limits within a society where women are limited by gender expectations. “Here’s what I do,” Oakley explains in “Truest in Heart and Aim,”
I put my eye to the rifle sight
or I look in the mirror, over my shoulder,
the glint of the sun, how it separates,
I use my eyes, both eyes, I use both eyes:
one on the target and one aimed high, higher.
Fire and it always hits. I don’t know why,
or I do know. I’ve kept open both eyes
and closed those other lower senses, I’m clothed
from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.
Every inch of me covered in the Texas heat
so that only I touch me, not even a breeze.
Simple and modest, undistracting: modest
as a girl can be with both eyes open, firing
at a glass ball, blown out blue as God.
I am a God girl, they say and I say, because
I’m clothed simply, dull as a horse, majestic
in that natural draping which exposes nothing
but these two round jewels I keep open wide.
Spectators eagerly pay to see the “Little Sure Shot” defy expectations by outshooting any man, yet they simultaneously expect her to conform to gender norms. “Truest in Heart and Aim” concludes with the reflection that women are expected to maintain a façade of happiness while being reduced to mere objects, where the speaker notes, “Ritual / oneness: smile wide and be nothing / but these eyes.” This suggests that, to navigate a male-dominated industry and society, women must conform to narrow expectations, minimizing themselves to non-threatening and utilitarian roles. This performative nature of femininity is reinforced in poems like “What Annie Oakley’s Mama Taught Her.” Here, blending Annie Oakley’s experience with that of a modern American woman, the mother-speaker imparts such advice as:
You will grow up to be beautiful
or you won’t. Cold can of pop
pressed against you daddy’s
forehead. You’ll be
an Adirondack chair, on sale
in the front of the store—and more:
useful and luxurious, you’ll strip
that old wallpaper, repaint
every room the blue
of your eyes.
You’ll clink into the coin jar
with the rest of us, golden
and stacked acorns, buried
under a woodshed, scrap
of paper to ignite the bonfire
we sit around.
Even if you are as gifted and special as Annie Oakley, the mother-speaker seems to say, your lot has already been cast because of gender, but this poem also suggests there is hope for change and even freedom within these limitations. The poem continues,
lovely or not, depending
on how you’re looking.
It’s open to broad definition
like any abstract term.
Be you abstract lines we’ll call
swan, portrait of a swan
or an American bald eagle.
I am saying whatever you are,
rise.
By presenting Annie Oakley’s life story as an integral part of the larger story of the American West, Moore Wagner’s collection reaches epic heights that transcend time and space. She successfully positions this epic in line with modern feminist questions and contemporary American sensibilities through the frequent confessional moment throughout the collection. In “Domesticated,” the contemporary speaker connects her modern maternity and home life to the Western myth:
We hike through the disappearance of the first homesteads,
sanded and waxed boards, little chimneys hand-laid
from foundations, now archways in the forest we walk
with our children. Here was a farm someone built.
Here, three sticks in the shape of a shelter.
I lose our only set of keys near the creek.
We separate to retrace our steps.
I take our daughter, who is looking for whole
acorns. She finds only split husks. Something else
has been here, has collected things to survive.
What will we do in the hills with no service
on either of our phones, no people for miles.
There is a creek. There are remnants
carved out from the landscape, crafted
and flattened. A long time ago a girl, dew soaked
in the frosted morning, chased a white-tailed deer.
Shot it. What would I be without
our little house to tend and wipe, without
the glass Pyrex mixing cups I measure into.
I can create buttermilk with just a little vinegar,
know which chemicals take stains off the center
island. I know just where the spoons go. God
help me. I walk the length of the water, tell
our daughter this is what we’ll do: rest
in those old ruins. We’re lucky someone else
came before us. We can sleep in a shelter, pull
the forest around us. I don’t know how
to make a fire. You don’t know how to make
a fire. Listen: there’s water and somehow, life
comes from that and look, right by the rocks: our
keys. These things we inherit as we do all things.
We will get to sleep in our own bed, I on the
right side, far away from the door, where I feel
safe, shielded, separated from that world
and that other girl, braids undone, gun
in hand, unlatching and firing and holding
the rifle up above her head. I mean to say
I have become wed to something else in this house.
I mean to say I don’t know what I am.
Moore Wagner doesn’t shy away from the complicated history of American expansion. She recognizes the privilege it creates for certain segments of American society, while also expanding the idea that the myths it created limited all segments of society. “Domesticated” is one of many poems throughout the collection that ties this limiting power of myth and expectation to a contemporary speaker. While a reader may initially engage with Lady Wing Shot out of historical interest and fascination with Annie Oakley’s story, these moments elevate the narrative to wider application.
Lady Wing Shot is a complex and engaging retelling of the American myth. The focus on Annie Oakley's journey as one of America's earliest superstars, juxtaposed with the mundane realities of modern American women, challenges the myths we often uphold unquestioningly. Far from didactic, the poetry of Lady Wing Shot tells relatable stories of sacrifice and power. This collection will appeal both to readers who crave poetry the rises to academic levels and those who seek a more emotional experience. Sara Moore Wagner has crafted a truly powerful work that contributes to the ongoing narrative of the American experience.
In case you missed it—here is Sara Moore Wagner’s poem from The Shore: