Write ’Em
Modern cowboys tame poetry to tell about life in the saddle.
With the echo of his boots hitting the wooden stage at Marshall Auditorium at Sul Ross State University, he steps into the spotlight. The light falls on his worn Levis and plaid khaki work shirt. The gray cowboy hat shadows his face. These are the everyday clothes of Joel Nelson, a working cowboy who lives outside Alpine. A black eyepatch covers his left eye—a war wound from a battle with a spirited pony. His face is wrinkled and rough, worn by the sun and the weather, but his voice sounds soft like silk: “This is the greatest cowboy poem ever written.” After a pause he visualizes the familiar path surrounded by the familiar golden wood and feels the familiar ground crunch underneath his boots as he approaches the familiar fork. He has been here many times before. “‘The Road Not Taken.’ By Robert Frost. ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood’ . . .”
But wait, Frost wasn’t a cowboy. He didn’t lasso cattle or drive them to Abilene. But try telling that to Nelson, who also recites Stephen Vincent Benét. He responds with conviction: “‘The Road Not Taken’ is a poem about choices, making decisions, and that’s what a lot of cowboys have to do. They have to make a choice to probably settle or live a lower standard of living in order to have the kind of life that they want.” Nelson says that’s why he introduced the poem that way at the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering.
Welcome to the world of cowboy poetry, where men and women who spend hours in the saddle quote famous poets like Shakespeare and Walt Whitman as often as they recite their own poetry. Men and women who work the land around them put together stanzas and verses in the same way they build fences and brand beeves.
The tradition of cowboy verse was born on the Texas prairies as settlers moved west, bringing with them the ballads of the Old Country during the mid-nineteenth century. On wagon trains and horseback the wanderers composed folk poems and songs to keep their minds active and to tell the stories of their travels. As the parties separated to stake out their own claims, the folk creations spread and were altered to fit life on the range. This pattern continued after the Civil War when the cowboy adopted the art of poetry to fit his occupation. During the 1870’s and 1880’s, the American cowpuncher spread cowboy poetry along the trails from Texas and New Mexico throughout the West. As the cattle industry buckled in the 1900’s, the first collections of cowboy poetry and songs were published by N. Howard “Jack” Thorp and John Lomax, canonizing the cowboy as an American icon. In turn more poets also began publishing their own works to combat the popularization of the American West, ushering in the golden age of cowboy poetry from 1905 to 1935. Their poems injected a grit and reality into the romanticized cowboy way of life that Hollywood and dude ranches embraced. These verses documented life in the West permanently, in their own words, not through the memories of others. S. Omar Barker, Bruce Kiskaddon, and Badger Clark, as well as Texas poets Allen McCandless, Larry Chittenden, and Carlos Ashley crafted the classics that modern cowboy bards perform alongside their own poems at poetry gatherings. The modern men follow the path of poetry these men laid, and the mission hasn’t changed in 140 years. “Maybe we write about a lot of these things, these horses that we used to have, because it’s our way of getting to ride them again,” rancher-poet Larry McWhorter says. “Basically it’s our way of keeping a hold of something that we love very much even if the realities of life have taken away that lifestyle from us, and we can’t live it the way we used to.”
This form of regional and occupational poetry is about the cowboy soul expressed in what most people would find the least-likely form of rhyme, meter, and balladry, but in reality, the poem is as cowboy as boots, jeans, and saddle. The art form is about what it means to be a cowboy and love the hard, rough work that beats down the body and wears on the soul. It is a celebration of sweat, laughter, tears, and blood. Cowboys live a life they love; they are determined to maintain its teachings and ways. The poem is more than a way to pass the time; it is a lesson, a memory, and a gift to future generations. “It’s not about being able to get up in front of an audience and entertain them and make them laugh,” says Bette Ramsey, cowboy poet Buck Ramsey’s widow. “It’s about passing on the ethics and the values—what the cowboy actually stands for, the integrity, and that’s what Buck is all about . . . It’s all about the way of life. They are not in it for the glory.”
Most cowmen are respected within their artistry but remain unknown to the outside world. Academicians label cowboy odes “verse,” not literary poetry like John Keats and Lord Byron, says Ab Abernethy, the executive secretary of the Texas Folklore Society. “It’s a popular type of poetry,” explains Abernethy, who admires cowboy poems. “People read it a hell of a lot more than T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, or A. E. Housman. . . . But it has not reached really the realm of what we call ‘poetry,’ that top ten or fifteen percent of poetry that is written.” The distinction is enough to rankle most cowboy poets because they approach each poem the way they build a fence or round up steer—with a determination for perfection. Acclaim and critiques come from within the group as Weatherford ranch manager McWhorter discovered after debuting his first poem, “Waitin’ on the Drive.” There was a small mistake in it, and he knew it. But the poem was good, so he thought no one would care. He walked onstage at a public performance of folk art in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and recited it word for word. As he walked off, fellow poet J. B. Allen introduced himself by chastising the mistake directly and asking McWhorter to change it. He did. “I mean nailed me hard, and he was right to have done that because if we are going to portray this life then we obligate ourselves to portray it truthfully,” McWhorter says. “When we write to each other and for ourselves, we put it out there [at the poetry gatherings], and the public is taking home with them a piece of who we at least hope to be.”
Their art bears a heavy responsibility of passing down a way of life through precise craftsmanship. Baxter Black, the best-selling cowboy poet, holds himself to three tenets of cowboy verse that other cowpunchers on the poetry circuit also consider gospel. The first requirement is perfect meter and perfect rhyme, which most traditional cowboy ballads conform to in order to give them the oral quality of a song. Add to the form an original thought. That thought can come from a story someone tells Black or an observation from when he worked as a livestock veterinarian in the West. Finally, he concludes it with a strong ending, and he has the recipe for a perfect cowboy poem. When writing, Black takes time to select the words and create the rhythm his story needs. He “welds” the words into place, so that a reader will hear the way the poem sounds as they follow the lines. Cowboys craft their creations for paper and the ear—unlike most traditional poetry—because the verses, like folk songs, are intended to be performed.
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