In this provocative and thoughtful anthology, many voices join in illuminating the remarkably vast and varied American West. The verse collected here ranges from American Indian tribal poems to old folk songs like “The Streets of Laredo,” from country-western lyrics to the work of such foreign poets as Bertolt Brecht and Zbigniew Herbert. Here is the West in all its rich variety–the harsh life of farms and ranches; man’s destructive invasion into forest and desert solitudes; the bars and bistros of San Francisco and Hollywood; Pacific surf and endless highways; the ghost towns, the poverty, and the legendary world of cowpunchers and gunslingers. From Robert Frost’s “Once by the Pacific” to Charles Bukowski’s “Vegas,” from Fred Koller’s “Lone Star State of Mind” to Thom Gunn’s “San Francisco Streets”–the West is evoked in all its incarnations, both actual and mythic.

One hundred fifty poems by seventy-five poets offer an inclusive collage of voices--protest poems of the Chicano farmworkers' movement, campfire cowboy songs, sacred Native American songs, and works by Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, and other canonical figures--from a land where cultural collision is part of the rugged landscape.

New Poets of the American West is a panoramic (and revealing) view of the West through the eyes of more than 250 poets and 450 poems, including poems in English, Spanish, Navajo, Salish, Assiniboine, and Dakota languages. In these pages you will visit flea markets, military bases, internment camps, reservations, funerals, weddings, rodeos, nursing homes, national parks, backyard barbecues, prisons, forests, meadows, rivers, and mountain tops. In your ¿mind¿s eye,¿ you will meet a simple-minded girl who gets run over by a bull, two mothers watching a bear menacingly nosing toward unsuspecting children, and children who ¿have yet to be toilet trained out of their souls.¿ You will learn to ¿reach into the sacred womb, / grasp a placid hoof / and coax life toward this certain moment.¿ You¿ll teach poetry to third graders, converse with hitchhikers, lament for an incarcerated brother ¿trying to fill the holes in his soul / with Camel cigarettes / and crude tattoos.¿ You will sit at the kitchen table where perhaps the world will end ¿while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.¿ In the short time each of us has in this world, here¿s your chance to experience life widely and to reflect on your experiences deeply.

The West found in Linda Hasselstrom's poems is neither the mythical Old West nor the New West of ranchettes and trophy homes. Hasselstrom's aria is set to the rhythms of the authentic West, laced with lyrical realism, and distilled to the sharp crispness of a plains morning. Here you'll find the night heron whose "slender beak descends, a sudden hammer on a silver spine." You'll "give yourself sunsets]]in shades of pink and gold" while "long tatters curl eastward like discarded ribbons."

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.

In his first poetry book, A Sweet Place to Play, Author Bob Frost compiled his collection of work from over thirty years. Cowboy Poems about the Old West and New is a collection of original poems the author wrote as he explored the west and rode with the Verde Vaqueros of Scottsdale, AZ. Bob tries to imagine what it must have been like in the old west. He wondered what they thought about and what humorous events might have taken place. Some of the poems are simple stories with a surprise humorous ending, while others take on a more serious pondering. In Chapter three he shares a different style in some of the poetry; some are more descriptive, others, metaphorical and even mystic. Living in Scottsdale, Arizona for almost forty years has given the author close ties and interest in the old west as well as experience in the new. In addition to being a poet, he is an auctioneer, enjoys golf, fishing and music.