Word: poems
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After working some 30 jobs in nine Western states in the past 14 years, Knox understands the modern cowboy, and his poetry speaks the plains' truths. As he writes in a poem called The Dying Times: "Any man makin' a living by punchin' cows/ Will know what I mean when I say/ The good times that's been had are comin' to an end;/ Friends, we've about reached that day." His voice is not alone...
Research for a recent anthology, Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering, by Hal Cannon of the Western Folklife Center in Salt Lake City, turned up about 5,000 poems by contemporary cowboys (known in their slang as waddies) and ranchers. "If you got to talking to most cowboys, they'd admit they write 'em," says Knox. "I think some of the meanest, toughest sons of bitches around write poetry." The first poem Knox penned more than a decade ago describes a barroom brawl he lost, and he's been at it ever since...
Knox has composed all but one of his poems while in the saddle, with the steady clip-clop cadence of the horse guiding the iambs and a simple rhyme making the words easy to remember. This is crucial, for cowboys tell poems; they don't recite them. They can be found preserving this oral tradition in a dusky bar or a seedy motel. Says Knox: "I've never in my life sat around a campfire and asked somebody to tell a poem...
...silencing of black leaders ended the crisis. Whether the new crackdown will have a similar effect remains to be seen. Last week the Financial Mail, a Johannesburg newsweekly, ran a cover story titled "The Townships at War." The cover illustration of rising flames included a quotation from a poem by W.B. Yeats: "Things fall apart; The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." South Africans could not help wondering if that was a comment or a prediction. --By Jill Smolowe. Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg
...edition appeared. At least one major poet recently turned his hand to this subject. Robert Penn Warren's New Dawn chronicles the Enola Gay's mission from the takeoff on Tinian, to the flight over the Aioi Bridge--"Color/ Of the world changes. It/ Changes like a dream." The poem ends with an account of the flyers' celebrations, and then after...