The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is the granddaddy of all cowboy poetry events, proclaimed by the US Senate in 2000 in recognition of its pioneering role in the preservation and revitalization of this important American tradition. In conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the event, this commemorative volume collects 100 poems by various cowboy poets who have appeared at the gathering over the last three decades, from Baxter Black and Wallace McRae to Georgie Sicking and Paul Zarzyski. Representing the best contemporary cowboy poetry from the first gathering to the present, the poets and poems are culled for their importance and quality with consideration for a wide range of topics that represent the richness and depth of this broad genre. In addition to poems that will make you smile, sigh, or sit up straight in your saddle, the anthology features expressive photos of the contributors, biographical and explanatory headnotes, relevant artwork from the Western Folklife Center’s extensive archives, and illuminating sidebars on various topics such as working cattle; life on the land; the relationship between cowboy poetry and song; gear, horses, or cattle mentioned in poems; and profiles and photos of important cowboy poets from earlier times. Cowboy poet extraordinare Baxter Black will provide a foreword, and Charlie Seemann, executive director of the Western Folklife Center, will write an introduction that gives context both to the event itself and to cowboy poetry in general, from the days of the trail drives in the nineteenth century to the lives of the hardworking men and women who still ranch and live on the land in the West today.

This book offers the first in-depth examination of a distinctive and community-based tradition rich with larger-than-life heroes, vivid occupational language, humor, and unblinking encounters with birth, death, nature, and animals in the poetry.

Collection of poems by Val Kilmer

Wally McRae, a regularly featured performer at the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, has performed on a syndicated television program and at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. He is the first cowboy poet to be granted a National Heritage Award. This book contains 94 of his poems, including such classics as Reincarnation, along with 40 new poems published for the first time.Paperback; 25 black & white illustrations

Can Poetry Matter? is an important book, and anyone who professes to care about the state of American poetry will have to take it into account. --World Literature Today.

In his groundbreaking essay "Can Poetry Matter?" (reprinted here), Dana Gioia suggested that many types of poetry, assumed by some readers to be marginal art, should not so easily be deleted from mainstream American literature. Throughout the twentieth century, perhaps no important writing has been as seriously -- and mistakenly -- overlooked by the literati as Cowboy poetry. Essentially connected to the folk tale, to legend, myth, the ballad, and song, and vitally enhanced by the contemporary voices of independent ranch women, Cowboy poetry vividly connects us to our past and our fragile, threatened natural environment. The writers included here, both working horse-and-cattle people and mainstream authors, share the brand of bold expression and independent thought found only among the best literary artists. Here is not literary theory. Here is literary life. An anthology as diverse as America herself!

A collection of poetry, profiles, and photographs celebrates the lives and work of twelve cowboy poets of the West