Saturday, April 29, 2023
R.E. Slater - Contentment
Friday, March 31, 2023
MORE Cowboy Poetry & Songs!
Out of a job and not makin' a dime
When up steps a feller and he says, "I suppose
That you're a bronc rider by the looks of your clothes?"
He guesses me right. "And a good one I'll claim
Do you happen to have any bad ones to tame?"
He says he's got one that's a good one to buck
And at throwing good riders he's had lots of luck.
He says this old pony has never been rode
And the man that gets on him is bound to be throwed
I gets all excited and I ask what he pays
To ride this old pony a couple of days.
He says, "Ten dollars." I says, "I'm your man
The bronc never lived that I cannot fan
The bronc never tried nor never drew breath
That I cannot ride till he starves plumb to death."
He says, "Get your saddle. I'll give you a chance."
We got in the buggy and went to the ranch
We waited till morning, right after chuck
I went out to see if that outlaw could buck.
Down in the corral, a-standin' alone
Was this little old caballo, a strawberry roan
He had little pin ears that touched at the tip
And a big forty-four brand was on his left hip.
He was spavined all round and he had pidgeon toes
Little pig eyes and a big Roman nose
He was U-necked and old with a long lower jaw
You could tell at a glance he was a regular outlaw.
I buckled on my spurs, I was feeling plumb fine
I pulled down my hat and I curls up my twine
I threw the loop at him, right well I knew then
Before I had rode him I'd sure earn my ten.
I got the blind on him with a terrible fight
Cinched on the saddle and girdled it tight
Then I steps up on him and pulled down the blind
And sat there in the saddle to see him unwind.
He bowed his old neck and I'll say he unwound
He seemed to quit living down there on the ground
He went up to the east and came down to the west
With me in the saddle, a-doing my best.
He sure was frog-walkin', I heaved a big sigh
He only lacked wings for to be on the fly
He turned his old belly right up to the sun
For he was a sun-fishin' son of a gun.
He was the worst bronco I've seen on the range
He could turn on a nickel and leave you some change
While he was buckin' he squalled like a shoat
I tell you that outlaw, he sure got my goat.
I tell all the people that pony could step
And I was still on him a-buildin' a rep
He came down on all fours and turned up on his side
I don't see how he kept from losing his hide.
I lost my stirrups, I lost my hat,
I was pullin' at leather as blind as a bat
With a phenomenal jump he made a high dive
And set me a-winding up there through the sky.
I turned forty flips and came down to the earth
And sit there a-cussing the day of his birth
I know there's some ponies that I cannot ride
Some of them living, they haven't all died.
But I bet all money there's no man alive
That can ride Old Strawberry when he makes that high dive.
Cowboy Poetry is also meant to be sung as much as to be narrated. Here are some saddle songs from the hearts of America's prairie ballad-eers.
"It [is] a jazz of Irish storytelling, Scottish seafaring and cattle tending, Moorish and Spanish horsemanship, European cavalry traditions, African improvisation, and Native American experience, if also oppression. . . . the songs and poems of the American cowboy are part of that old tradition of balladry." —Western Folklife Center Archive
One of those rare indigenous creations of America, cowboy poetry has a long and vivid history, driven by its colorful practitioners and memorable canon of poems.
Cowboy poetry is distinctive both in its culturally specific subject matter and its traditional use of rhyme and meter. While the range of emotional landscapes explored in cowboy poetry are the traditional province of poetry—from joy to grief, from humor to spirituality—the particulars derive from the American West: horses, cattle, fire, prairie storms, mythic figures of cowboys and ranchers, and the sublime wilderness. The use of forms such as ballads and odes and of poetic devices such as mnemonics and repetition sets cowboy poetry apart from the majority of contemporary poetry and relates it more to the Homeric tradition of oral poetry.
In the anthology Cowboy Poetry Matters, editor Robert McDowell collects the poetry of such cowboy poets as Paul Zarzyski, Linda Hussa, Laurie Wagner Buyer, Wallace McRae, and Buck Ramsey, as well as poets such as Maxine Kumin and Donald Hall, who have written in the genre. The collection also contains scholarly essays about cowboy poetry, including Zarzyski's response to Dana Gioia’s "Can Poetry Matter?": "The Lariati versus/verses the Literati: Loping Toward Dana Gioia's Dream Come Real." The book ends with a list of "Cowboy Poetry Anthologies of Note," and while there are cowboy poetry archives, publications, documentaries, audio recordings, and online resources, most would argue that cowboy poetry lives in the human voice, during live readings and gatherings.
Many cowboy poetry gatherings exist in almost all Western states, but the most popular of them is the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, held in Elko, Nevada. Every January, cattle people, rural folks, poets, musicians, western enthusiasts, and curious urban dwellers gather for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, described as "a jubilee of conversation, singing, dancing, great hats and boots, stories, laughing and crying, big steaks, incessant rhymes, and a galloping cadence that keeps time for a solid week." Launched in 1985, the Gathering is a program of the Western Folklife Center, a regional nonprofit folk arts organization dedicated to preserving, perpetuating, and presenting the folk arts of the West.
- A Prairie Song by Anonymous
- The Cowboy's Life by Anonymous
- The Railroad Corral by Anonymous
- Ridin' by Charles Badger Clark
- The Song of the Leather by Charles Badger Clark
- A Cowboy's Prayer by Charles Badger Clark
- The Wind is Blowin' by Charles Badger Clark
- The Christmas Trail by Charles Badger Clark
- The Outlaw by Charles Badger Clark
- The Pale Horse by James W. Whilt
- The Tied Maverick by Charles Badger Clark
- The Old Frying Pan by James W. Whilt
- The Old Dutch Oven by Arthur Chapman
- Bacon by Charles Badger Clark
- Southwestern June by Charles Badger Clark
- To Her by Charles Badger Clark
- A Roundup Lullaby by Charles Badger Clark
- From Town by Charles Badger Clark
- A Bad Half Hour by Charles Badger Clark
- Hawse Work by Charles Badger Clark
- The Camp-fire Has Gone Out by Anonymous
- The Dying Cowboy by H. Clemons
- Passing of the Range by James W. Whilt
Wikipedia - Cowboy Poetry
Notable cowboy poets
- S. Omar Barker
- Baxter Black
- Arthur Chapman
- Badger Clark
- Curley Fletcher
- Steven Fromholz
- Cathy Park Hong
- Bruce Kiskaddon
- Wally McRae
- Waddie Mitchell
- Joel Nelson
- Red Steagall
- Paul Zarzyski
In addition, Robert W. Service is sometimes classified as a cowboy poet.
Famed spoken-word artist Bingo Gazingo has done at least one cowboy poem, "Everything's OK at the OK Corral."
See also
What three classic poems do you think every cowboy poet should know, and why? - Sincerely, Seeking Out Standards
*Have a question for the cowboy poets? They would be delighted to hear from you! Submit a question on our Facebook, Instagram, or by email to media@westernfolklife.org.
- “They Keep A-Stealing on You in the Night” by Rhoda Sivell
- “Ridin’” by Charles Badger Clark
- “Hail and Farewell” by Delia Gist Gardner
*Note from the Western Folklife Center: We edited titles and writing credits in the poets’ responses so that the same poem is referred to by the same title throughout. But, in oral tradition, the poems go by variations and shorthands of the titles, so we left a hint of that everyday usage here and there.
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
Monday, March 27, 2023
Christian Feminist Poetry
Untold Volumes is a feminist theology poetry series from a variety of perspectives and faith traditions, featuring both established and emerging poets. The poems explore the intersections of revisionism and remembrance, celebrations and speculations, doubts and fury, psalms and midrash. Readers are invited to engage with the difficult questions and challenges inherent in spiritual experience as the poetic lens condenses powerful insights and propels us toward rediscovery of the familiar. Click here to learn more about the Untold Volumes poetry blog.