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Cowboy Poets To Gather In Texas

The Associated Press

Cowboy poet Henry Real Bird, second from left, listens to Hot Club of Cow Town Thursday night January 29 in the Pioneer Bar of the Western Folklife Center during the 25th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.

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The Associated Press

Published: February 25, 2009

ODESSA, Texas - High noon in Alpine, and a tumbleweed rolls across a deserted road in front of a shadowy figure with a five o'clock shadow.

A horse whinnies as the figure reaches toward his belt.

Then there's a click.

His pen is loaded. His guitar is tuned.

He invokes his muses — his heart takes the reins — and the 23rd annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering has begun.

About 50 cowboy and cowgirl performers from several countries will descend on Alpine on Friday to kick off the event, where Texas' quintessential icon has been going for years to shed some light on the less-stereotypical dimensions of life on the range.

"The poetry and the songs are about cowboys and cows and wreck and horses and the stuff they run into," event organizer Bill Brooks said. "A lot of it is humorous, and a lot of it is deadly serious about the work they do and lives they live."

Hundreds, if not thousands, of poetry enthusiasts, cowboys and the downright curious have come to Sul Ross State University for shows in the past, he said.

Event performer and organizer Don Cadden said the event is the second oldest cowboy poetry gathering in the United States. People from across the United States — from places like Florida and Wyoming — come to the Big Bend to attend the mostly free festival, where they hope to catch of glimpse of what it's really like to be a cowboy.

Oddly enough, he said, more people come from out of town than from the surrounding area.

Brooks said about 80 percent of the performers are authentic cowboys who make most of their living on a ranch or by working in other livestock-related industries, which makes them the real deal. After travel expenses, few profit from their performances, so their motivations are not financial.

Many of those in attendance at the event are in for a surprise, because few realize how deeply some cowboy poetry goes, he said. The festival can be a real "roller-coaster of emotions."

"I've seen people in the audience crying, you know, just the tears running down their face," Cadden said

Cowboy performers blend a rich cultural heritage with the newer experimental forms of storytelling, he said, which makes for an interesting mix of Wild West tradition and modern influence.

Nelson Sager, organizer and professor of English at Sul Ross, said he has heard cowboy poems with topics ranging from handlebar mustaches to getting pulled over by state troopers for a cattle trailer with a broken taillight.

He said the event's organizers enjoy the art form and ingenuity of poets and singers trying new things, but they always keep in mind that they are also preserving the past, and many poets and singers stick to traditional ballads, poems and songs — many dating back at least a hundred years.

"I think people want to hold on to a tradition like that," Sager said. "It's part of Americana. A lot of ranchers consider themselves a sort of keeper of tradition."

"When I look at what's going on with poetry, it seems like every other that somebody's saying poetry's dead," he said. "And I don't think that's true for this particular type."

But what keeps people flocking to Alpine, year after year, for this event?

"The cowboy's always been a mystique and something everybody just enjoyed from the western movies," Cadden said. "The cowboy has always been an American icon, people just love to hear about it. It's folks that just want to hear more about it and be involved with it."

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