Once We Were Kings

The majority of my cowboy poetry is narrative. I like to make a story around an idea and I take pains to detail it so that the reader can 'see' the characters and the setting. It seems to pull the reader in by taking a couple of verses to describe where he is and what he sees. Usually I know where the poem is going, and I outline it in order not to get off track. Without it, I might get too wordy. Sometimes, though, I might not know the ending until I get there. It comes to me as I'm wrapping up the last verse or two, and it has made a couple of good poems even better. The ideas for my poems ?come from several sources. The first one I wrote was to explain a Charles M. Russell painting in rhyme and verse. Nowadays they call that an 'art spur.' About 20 years ago, I began using my horseback experiences in New Mexico for the plots of poems. Lately I've taken some stories told to me and put them to rhyme and meter. I've also built poems around an idea, researching the details in order to be accurate for the time frame and making up the action as I go along. With things like family history for my theme, I've relied on diaries, interviews, and photos to build the characters in the poem. With those it's important to me to remain as true to life as possible. I have found, for the most part, that stories can be retold with no exaggeration and be entertaining and informative. It's up to me to show the reader how it relates to him. I really enjoy being able to paint the details with words and to choose the words which best tell the story. It's a challenge to put those words in an order that are technically correct in poetic form and still say what I want to say. Sometimes the verses seem almost to write themselves; other times it might take an hour to get the meter and choice of rhyming words just right. Having a degree in English and studying poetry from the 20th century helps quite a bit. Most of writing poetry, though, is grinding out the words which best fit the meter you have chosen. Then you edit, edit, edit. Right now I'm the President of the Western Wordsmiths Chapter of the Western Music Association. The Association 'encourages and supports the preservation, performance and composition of historic traditional and contemporary music and poetry of The West.' The Western Wordsmith Chapter (for poets and songwriters) is even more focused. We produce, promote and preserve the tales, stories and poems of the Western culture in written or oral form. Many of us perform our poems like story tellers and very few merely read it. We have contests and yearly awards because we believe competition improves our craft and creates venues to come together and celebrate our Western heritage. ?These venues are generally referred to as 'Cowboy Poetry Gatherings.' With only about 800 members nationwide, our folks are spread out from California to South Carolina, with the majority being in the West. The travel is worth the experience, and some of us travel hundreds of miles to perform for pay that rarely covers our? expenses. While there are many full-time entertainers, just as many write and perform cowboy poetry and music solely because they want to be around like-minded friends and hear cowboy poetry and music. Our cowboy poetry can be traced back to the late 1800's, when men of all colors and countries began what has become the American cowboy. These mostly illiterate orphans, Civil War veterans, and landless men who had no future banded together to drive someone else's cattle from south Texas to the rails in central Kansas. Some went beyond to rails and supplied beef to western outposts of the U.S. government. No matter their skin color, their country of origin, or their religion, they were referred to as, 'cowboys.' The term was often used disparagingly, depending on whether you were riding a horse of walking behind a plow. These men passed on barroom rhymes and songs, added verses to them, or were inspired to write new ones. The music has deep roots in Celtic traditions. The poetry is as deeply rooted to English forms of rhyme and meter dating back at least as far as William Shakespeare. There are hundreds of stories and books about these men. If cowboy poetry attracts you, I invite you to read all you can find by Charles Badger Clark, Henry Herbert Knibbs, and Bruce Kiskaddon. Those three make a good foundation for poetry by scores of others. Though the West they wrote of is mostly gone, there are still real cowboys out there. As Chris LeDoux's song explains, 'You just can't see them from the road.' For contemporary poetry, check out the work Larry McWhorter, J.B. Allen, Joel Nelson, and Buck Ramsey. If you like what you've read and heard, attend a cowboy poetry and music gathering. You'll be welcome and you'll be glad you went.