COWBOY POETRY WEEK
There seems to be a special designation for every day, week and month, and where this all comes from I do not have a clue. I just learned that the third week of April is “Cowboy Poetry Week;” and April is “Cowboy Poetry Month.” Having a good idea what Cowboy Poetry is all about, I still thought it would be interesting to see how the experts explain it, so I did what every curious person would do, I googled it.
Actually, it was rather fun and a far cry from the usual junk and advertisements that cloud up the internet. The first thing that popped up was several videos by people who I have performed with. There were many examples of classic and contemporary cowboy poetry and I was surprised to see a quote by me as to what I thought was the best classic cowboy poem, which was by none other than my great-grandfather, Ben Arnold. Ben wrote a lot of great poetry but the one I pegged was entitled “His Campfire Has Gone Out;” which was penned right here in South Dakota after the opening of the State to homesteading and the demise of the great open range country. After the Civil War, Ben was on numerous cattle drives and was one of Ed Lemmon’s favorite cowboys (as alluded to in “Boss Cowman” and other writings of Lemmon’s) where Ben worked on the L7 for 17 years. The poem, in part, describes the ending of an era that Ben was a part of, ending with: “Soon we’ll leave this country, then you’ll hear the angels shout, Oh, here they come to Heaven, their camp fire had gone out.” Incidentally, that poem was set to music and recorded by Don Edwards and other great cowboy singers.
Cowboy poetry in the United States dates back to the period of the long-distance cattle drives that followed the Civil War and has become a thriving tradition ever since. One of the best known classic cowboy poets was none other than South Dakota’s Charles Badger Clark who was also South Dakota’s first Poet Laureate. Badger’s poem, “A Cowboy’s Prayer” first published in 1906. is noted as the most famous poem of all time about cowboys.
When you google “Cowboy Poetry,” there are multiple articles about the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, which originated 40 years ago and remains in Elko, Nevada. In fact, I learned that there is actually a “Cowboy Poetry Gathering Week” which is designated as the last week in January each year.
There are no set rules for cowboy poetry, however, most traditional cowboy poets write in a “rhyme and meter” style, such as did Badger Clark. Without a doubt, the two most popular cowboy poets of my generation were the late Baxter Black and South Dakota’s Elizabeth Ebert, and I am proud to claim them both as dear friends who helped me a lot in my own poetry writing.
When you attend a cowboy poetry gathering, whether it is Medora’s Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering (Memorial Day Weekend); Old West Days in Valentine, Nebraska (next week); or even the National Gathering at Elko, you will hear a good amount of western music, and it certainly is good! This is not “Country and Western,” just “Western”, which is cowboy poetry put to music. As an example, everyone knows “Home on the Range,” which was a poem titled “My Western Home” by Dr. Brewster M. Higley in the early 1870s after he had moved from Indiana to Smith County, Kansas. The poem was set to music by Daniel Kelley, a fiddle player, and that song is just one of many cowboy poems set to music. Many songs were born on the cattle drives, on the ranges, or in bunk houses or homestead shacks, from poems penned by folks describing their lifestyle. Today, contemporary cowboy poets and singers, such as Robert Dennis, Paul Larson, Tammy Hughson, Deb Carpenter-Nolting, Jessie Veeder, and many many more are turning out excellent works in the same manner as did Dr. Higley and Daniel Kelley. Peggie Douglas of Hill City has put a number of Badger’s poems to music and certainly done him proud.
If you want to learn more about Cowboy Poetry, plan to attend a Cowboy Poetry event in your area, or if unable to do that, just google it and enjoy a celebration of the West, both past and present!