Mar
27
Cowboy Poetry in The Economist
Filed Under poetry for money
The Economist on Cowboy Poetry:
The rise of the cowboy poet coincides with the virtual disappearance from popular culture of another Western figure. Hollywood used to churn out dozens of films a year about square-jawed gunslingers. It now produces almost none, and there is currently no new Western series to be found on broadcast television or basic cable. But the departure of the heroic cowboy has opened some room for gentler, more reflective voices. Although it is growing, their audience is smaller: unlike Western films, cowboy poetry is mostly produced by Westerners, for Westerners.
It is no less romantic for that. Cowboy poems are filled with horses, campfires, strong coffee and strong women—what writer Wally McRae calls “things of intrinsic worth”. In keeping with their subject matter, cowboy poets tend to write in a traditional, rhyming style. They echo folk songs or Rudyard Kipling’s poems more than modern poetry.
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