A collection of Michael Whitaker cowboy poetry, songs, and philosophy depicting the glories of blue moons, western skies, mountain trails, and countrysides. In addition, poignant vignettes portray friends and strangers he met on his travels. And he includes a touch of romance. Whitaker aimed to preserve the age old traditions of cowboy history and lifestyle through his rhyming stories and musings. He wrote of family, home, friends old and new, and life’s simple pleasures through word paintings. Performed before American northwest audiences as part of the three-some group, the Rockin’ HW, these poems are illustrated by beautiful original photography.

This book offers the first in-depth examination of a distinctive and community-based tradition rich with larger-than-life heroes, vivid occupational language, humor, and unblinking encounters with birth, death, nature, and animals in the poetry.

These recent works are from America's best cowboy and cowgirl poets, most of whom are regular participants in local cowboy poetry gatherings and in the Granddaddy Gathering held each January in Elko, Nevada. Included here are some of the best-known poets, such as Waddie Mitchell, Wally McRae, and more who breathe reality into the myth of the ranching life. Cowboy Poetry is a cultural phenomenon that continues to spread like wildfire across the country.

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

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.

Contending that many good poets live and write in the American West, Andrew Elkins suggests that the western landscape--be it New Mexico desert or Alaskan wilderness--shapes the work that is created there. The place's essence and spirit inevitably become part of the work that flows from the poet's creativity. Elkins examines the work of Peggy Pond Church, John Haines, Adrian C. Louis, Richard Hugo, Jane Hirshfield, and several cowboy poets. --Texas Christian University Press.