Wild West Poems

A collection of funny tall tales featuring cowboys, cowgirls, and other characters from the Wild West.

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 collection of poems was chosen from among 10, 000 gathered from cowboy reciters, ranch poets and from a library of over 200 published works of cowboy verse. One third of the poems are classics that have proven their vitality by having lived in the hearts and minds of cowboys and ranchers for decades. The remaining two-thirds are new, created within the last few years. "Most cowboy poems speak of real events and people, from bucking horses and cagey cows to old Stetson hats and long winter travels. Although they focus on the ordinary stuff of life, their truths . . . seem no less eternal than those penned by William Shakespeare. Some cowboy poems are bust-a-gut funny; a few are downright dirty . . . most carry an honest, primitive power." --Michael Riley, TIME Magazine

This is a collection of 20 side-splitting poems and knee-slapping songs, including poems about a cowboy who only bathes once a year, a chilli eating contest with a very explosive ending and the world's smallest cowboy who rounds up mice instead of cattle.

"In this text, author and editor David Fillingim turns his attention to the West - West Georgia that is. This book examines how the contemporary cowboy poetry revival that sprung up in 1985 in Elko, Nevada, has borne fruit in the Peach State. First, Fillingim traces the history of cowboy poetry and its emergence as a cultural phenomenon. Then he recounts the story of how Georgia became home to a vibrant cowboy poetry scene. But the largest part of the book is an anthology of poems by some of the finest cowboy poets anywhere, and they all happen to be in Georgia." "As celebrated cowboy-poet Doris Daley says in the preface, "everywhere is west of somewhere". So settle in, and travel with Fillingim to someplace west of wherever you are, and enjoy this unique combination of shrewd scholarly analysis and heartwarming cowboy poetry." --Book Jacket.

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!