|
|
|
      
|
Cowboys, Roots and Poetry© 2002 Kathleen Adams. All rights reserved. I spent a long weekend last month absorbed in one of my favorite annual rituals: Arvada's Cowboy Poetry Festival. Like Japanese haiku or African praise poems, cowboy poetry is unique unto itself and the rodeo'in, ranchin', cowboyin', rough-ridin' traditions and lifestyles that it documents and celebrates. Arvada, Colorado is my home town, the place where I grew up, where my mom still lives in the house they bought for $17,000 in 1959. This is the 13th year for the Cowboy Poetry Festival, and I've been to every one, hooked from the very first poem by roughstock rider Paul Zarzyski ("rhymes with bar whiskey"): Her Levis, so tight Cowboy poetry connects me to my roots. This is the poetry of the land where I was born, the land where I still live, the land I love, the Old West. My Granddaddy Bill was a working Colorado cowboy in the days following Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. In 1904, my grandmother's family set out across the Cherokee Nation in the Oklahoma Territory to homestead 40 acres. Although she was only two, Goggie always swore she remembered the day her daddy died, thrown and drug by a spooked horse. With two covered wagons and ten children, my great-grandmother buried her husband at the side of the road and mustered on alone. She eventually settled in the southeastern tip of Colorado, where she raised her family solo. Poetry brought my grandparents together. Granddaddy Bill penned a little romantic ditty, signed it, and stuffed it in a crevice between the rocks at the top of Two Buttes. Goggie, then 17, climbed Two Buttes one day and found the poem. She thought it enchanting, and asked around town until she found the handsome young cowboy poet. They courted and married and birthed my mother, a child of the prairie. Legends abound in cowboy poetry: How the rocking, sing-song tempo matched the cadence of the horse. How a ballad crooned from the saddle lulled restless cattle and soothed the loneliness of moonlit patrol. How the vaqueros kept the old Spanish stories and traditions alive through telling and retelling them around the fire. How the ribald humor of the range was used to cool overheated tempers and libidos. How the love poems recited or scrawled by a timid suitor resulted in weddings, babies and a spread of one's own. In his essay "Bards of the Bunkhouse," Eddie Nickens writes, "In its written form some might call this poetry simplistic, unpolished. Like a horse in need of a rider, however, these words need a human voice to guide them, and when that voice is deft - or gifted - the result is poetry of emotional clarity and unabashed honesty that speaks eloquently to those far removed from the cowboy experience." Such a deft voice belongs to Dee Strickland Johnson, "Buckshot Dot," who will open the National Association for Poetry Therapy's annual conference (Denver, April 17-21, 2002) with an evening of high-spirited cowboy "pomes." This one is among my favorites. It brings to mind my grandmother's stories of her older sisters, for whom the tradition of "box suppers" resulted in marriage. It seems that in cowboy days, churches sponsored Sunday afternoon socials for which girls of courtship age prepared their best picnic meals and lavishly decorated the boxes containing them. Eligible bachelors, particularly those with their eye on a special young woman, used all powers of deductive reasoning, gossip and bribery to learn which box supper belonged to which lady. An auction ensued, and a successful bid guaranteed the couple a dinner date! Read this poem by "Buckshot Dot" aloud, and share it with someone you love for Valentine's Day. Maverick Love Affair That dang little maverick had strayed again, --© Dee Strickland Johnson, "Buckshot Dot" As President of the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT), I warmly invite all poets, writers, healers and lovers of words to join us in Denver for our annual conference. "Buckshot Dot" will be joined by keynote poet Naomi Shihab Nye, who will present both a poetry reading and a workshop to the full session, as well as keynote speaker Dr. Peggy Osna Heller, a beloved pioneer in the poetry therapy field, and the finest trainers in poetry and journal therapy in the world. We are especially pleased this year to be joined by Gillie Bolton, one of Great Britain's foremost voices in the healing power of creative writing, by Dahlia Lorenz, the first credentialed poetry therapist in Israel, and by Patricia Rey Romero, who works in Bogota, Colombia with "children of the violence." Don't miss this opportunity to immerse yourself in creative healing, to write, to listen, to be moved and touched at depth. Make plans now to join us in Denver at NAPT's home on the range. |
|
|
© 2001-2006 Kathleen Adams. All rights reserved.
This site has been optimized for
|