Join him to learn more about the art of recitation and the poetry of the old West. You can also find cowboy poets performing on the circuit like Andy Hedges, who will be performing and giving workshops at the Florida Storytelling Festival, January 26 – 29, 2023. You can even attend the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, that started in 1985. In the truth beyond the legends, Cowboy Poetry has a long literary history and a resurgence in popularity. Which it is, mostly. While seasoned with truth, as legends often are, the real story of our folk art is more complex and less romantic, but equally intriguing. It’s a touching story, the stuff of legends. Still today, these roughshod rhymes are recited wherever folks in wide-brim hats and high-top boots gather.Īnd so goes the story called Cowboy Poetry. Being illiterate, these poets of the prairies passed their recitations from mouth to ear, ear to mouth, mouth to ear, all down the generations in an unbroken oral chain. Evenings along the way, as the sun set romantically in the west, the boys gathered and, accompanied by a crackling fire and the howl of coyotes, recited for one another rhymes composed during long hours in the saddle, set to the rhythms of creaking leather, rattling dewclaws, and drumming hoofbeats. Long, long ago in a land called Texas, unemployed soldiers from the recent War Between the States rounded up herds of wild cattle and trailed them north to feed a hungry nation.
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