By Anastasia Dyakovskaya

At midnight, when the cattle are sleeping,
On my saddle I pillow my head,
And up at the heavens lie peeping
From out of my cold grassy bed;--
Often and often I wondered,
At night when lying alone,
If every bright star up yonder
Is a big peopled world like our own.
-excerpt from The Cowboy’s Meditation

When we think of poetry it’s not often that we conjure up the image of a cowboy. Try again. This time, the cowboy you see in your mind’s eye, bobbing in his saddle or crouching next to a fire, isn’t just a cowboy. He is a thinker and an artist. You don’t have to be a cowboy to write cowboy poetry, but it certainly does help, as these poems offer a rare glimpse of first-hand encounters with the romanticized realities of a cowboy – or girl’s – western life.   

Cowboy poetry is still a vibrant and evolving literary form today because cowboys are still carrying out the same necessary functions that they have throughout their history. The origins of what we now consider a typical cowboy lay in medieval Spain, where vaqueros (literally translated as cowboys) were employed to herd cattle over vast expanses of land. When the Conquistadors and other Spaniards reached the Americas during the 16th century, so too did this practice. It was not until the second half of the 19th century, however, when the ongoing encounters and exchange among American settlers and Hispanic and Native American vaqueros finally merged into something new: what we now know as the traditional American cowboy.

The age-old livelihoods of this new generation are what provided their pens and paper with subject matter – ranch work, the tending of the animals, the natural surroundings of the American West, memory and nostalgia, and a description of western life in general. In its structure, though, cowboy poetry tends to be somewhat limited, as most popular poets have remained within the guidelines of classical rhyming verse. More often than not, this is because these poems are meant to be recited or put to music.  Nevertheless, there are also a number of cowboy poets who break this form and there continues to be a boundless variety of work.

There are many American cowboys today that still take this genre quite seriously and that continue to contribute their talents to the field. For more information, please visit:
http://www.cowboypoetry.com
http://www.cowboy-poetry.org
http://www.hebercitycowboypoetry.com
http://www.westernfolklife.org