Parker describes the pair’s likely fate in more artful terms, concluding “The Trail’s End” with a prescient prediction: “Some day they’ll go down together / they’ll bury them side by side. We will / meet then out near Grape Vine / if the Laws donte get there / first.” He finishes the poem with a plaintive plea: “But please God Just one / moore visit before we are / Put on the spot.” In his untitled work, Barrow notes, “We are going home tomorrow / to look in on the folks. and if it’s a shoot out to / to live that’s the way it / will have to bee.”Īt the same time, Atlas Obscura’s Taub writes, the two were quick to acknowledge the probable denouement of their decidedly law-unabiding lifestyle. About the third night / they’re invited to fight, / by a sub-gun’s rat-tat-tat,” Barrow argues, “We donte want to hurt anney one / but we have to Steal to eat. Whereas Parker observes that “If they try to act like citizens / and rent them a nice little flat. Much like Parker’s poetry, Barrow’s writing attempts to refute the media’s depiction of the pair as ruthless, cold-blooded killers. So / I will try my hand at Poetry / With her riding by my side.” (This language is taken directly from Heritage Auction’s listing, which further states that the lines attributed to Barrow are filled with “gangster-ese” jargon and reflective of his minimal education.) Interestingly, the Guardian’s Flood explains, a 13-stanza poem penned by Barrow appears to serve as a direct response to Parker’s work, opening with the lines: “Bonnie s Just Written a poem / the Story of Bonnie & Clyde. Written by Bonnie.” Still, miscellaneous verses from the poem remain scattered throughout the volume. Whatever the planner’s provenance, Taub notes that the duo soon converted it into a poetry workbook.Ī complete draft of Parker’s best-known poem, a 16-stanza work alternately titled “The Trail’s End” or “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde,” was originally written in the notebook, but it was later ripped out and stored in an envelope labeled “Bonnie & Clyde. It’s unclear exactly how the diary ended up in Parker and Barrow’s possession- Heritage Auctions writes that it was “apparently discarded”-but penciled-in entries point toward the original owner’s occupation as a dedicated, perhaps even professional, golf player.
The volume, set to go on auction this April alongside a trove of photographs, includes a poem ostensibly written in Clyde Barrow’s spelling error-filled scrawl.Īccording to Atlas Obscura’s Matthew Taub, the notebook itself is a “Year Book,” or day planner, dating to 1933. But as Alison Flood reports for the Guardian, a newly revealed notebook once owned by the couple suggests Parker wasn’t the only one to try her hand at creative writing. Bonnie Parker’s poetry has long provided a portal into the fleeting lives of Depression-era America’s most notorious pair of outlaws.
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