The Eagle I wrote this poem about when I was living on Dr. M.J. Nachtriebs Ranch at Northrop, Colorado. In the mornings as I would leave to work I would see this pair of eagles above in their nest in a tree. At night when I got home I wouldn’t see them, but just before dark they would fly over the camper I was staying in. I always liked to think they were watching over me.

He was a man born horseback And rode anything with hair Whether outlaw broncs or outlaw mules He always had some flair Budweiser was his drink of choice Along with vodka scotch and crown The cowboy life was the life for him

Published for devotees of the cowboy and the West, American Cowboy covers all aspects of the Western lifestyle, delivering the best in entertainment, personalities, travel, rodeo action, human interest, art, poetry, fashion, food, horsemanship, history, and every other facet of Western culture. With stunning photography and you-are-there reportage, American Cowboy immerses readers in the cowboy life and the magic that is the great American West.

Author Sharon Carpenter was introduced to the cowboy poetry writing and performing style by Joel Hayes, founder of Douglas County's Poetry Writers Group located in Douglasville, Georgia. She was a performing poet with the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Annual Georgia Cowboy Gatherings. Now, she has collected her cowboy poetry into one volume. Western Cowboy Poetry: An African American Perspective is an engaging collection of poems specifically written to be delivered at cowboy poetry gatherings. These verses provide an imaginary yet entertaining perspective on what life experiences might have been like for African Americans who strived to live in the western region of the United States during both the pre- and post-civil war era. These poems offer historical and contemporary cowboy viewpoints and they are based upon research of historical contributions of African Americans. Western Cowboy Poetry consists of four sections, emphasizing the journey and contributions of African American cowboys; the work experience for these cowboys; cowboy love stories; and the perspective of African American cowhands of the time on values. Isom Dart Let me tell you the story Of ol' Isom Dart, How he broke my will and my soul, And also my heart. He was as elusive as them horses He was always chasin'; You think you landed him, Then you find—time, it was a wastin' ... "Sharon's unique style brings an African American perspective on western cowboy poetry." —Douglas County Sentinel

These "New Westers", Johnson reveals, line-dance and two-step, listen to Garth Brooks and George Strait, drink beer from long-neck bottles, wear clothes ordered from Sheplers, watch rodeo on ESPN, play Wild West arcade games, eat fajitas and tacos in stuccoed Mexican cafes, collect Western art and Native American crafts, and vacation in and move to the West. "New Westers" rewrite the history and biography of the West. They reimagine the West in Cowboy sagas and poetry, Native American novels, Mexican-American drama, nature writing, revisionist films, eclectic visual artwork, and neo-traditional music. They flock to movies like Thelma and Louise, Unforgiven, and Dances with Wolves, watch mini-series like Lonesome Dove, and read bestsellers like The Crossing and All The Pretty Horses. "New Westers" are men and women who may or may not have ever hitched up a horse but who crave connection with the West. At the end of a century of urbanization, technological change, and cultural confusion, they seek a more natural home, a fuller and wider sense of place, and a deeper and more colorful personal identity. They also want to revive the dream of the mythic West - but on different terms. They overrun the Old West and yet strive to preserve it, raising troubling new concerns about the differences between the mythic and the real, between traditional and contemporary cultural influences.

The politics of popular westerns are surprising in substance and significance, especially of late. Cowboy Politics shows how westerns in literature, cinema, and television face the challenges of Western Civilization even more than the perils of American frontiers. Its strategy is to compare key westerns with major theories of modern and postmodern politics. So it analyzes novels from Owen Wister to Zane Grey and Larry McMurtry. It focuses on films from the western revival beginning in the 1990s and featuring Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, while its interest in TV stretches from singing cowboys and Gunsmoke to David Milch’s Deadwood. Critics are apt to find in westerns the modern politics of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. They tap devices of individuality, rationality, contract, sovereign enforcement, and representation to overcome the chaotic violence of a wild zone. Cowboy Politics examines how westerns often find such measures insufficient to tame the West as a culture of honor and anger that deteriorates into feud-al vengeance. Instead westerns see the West as the sunset land that is already growing old and moving on. So westerns seek fresh starts informed by comparing civilizations more than demonizing savages. Westerns worry that modern politics devolve into exploitation, oppression, spectacle, and terror. So they pursue supplements in such postmodern politics as republicanism, perfectionism, populism, feminism, and environmentalism. Especially westerns explore politics of persuasive speech-in-action-in-public, doing beauty, and self-reliance in the modes of Hannah Arendt and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The first two chapters of Cowboy Politics explain how westerns do political theory for popular audiences by making many of our myths: the symbolic stories of individuals and communities which we live daily. The next three chapters trace the initially modern theories of government in many westerns. Then western turns to republican honor, rhetoric, response-ability, and character tracking occupy the following four chapters. And these set the stage for another four chapters on western attention to postmodern terror, mythmaking, celebrity, spectacle, and forgiveness. The final two chapters analyze how “late,” “satirical,” and “transformative” westerns develop realist defenses for their surprisingly postmodern politics.