[a journalist's review of our cowboy poetry tour of Great Britian in 1995 that just popped up...]
The Cowboy Poets.
The Cowboy Poets are in a mean mood.
The long journey from Cambridge by minibus combined with a tricky television
interview has turned their spirits as black as the clouds hanging over Cardiff
Bay. A polite petition from the photographer to Randy Rieman requesting
that he slip a dark jacket or jumper over his white shirt for the pictures
meets with the rebuke” “I don't have one, and even if I did I wouldn't put it
on.”
My pardners, but we're off to a good
start.
The four poets: sometime bronc rider
Paul Zarzyski, ranchers Sue Wallis and Rod McQueary and horse breaker Randy
Rieman are in the throes of their first British tour, a stint which includes
two appearances in Wales as part of the U.K Year of Literature and Writing hosted
by Swansea. An hour before the start of their first Welsh date at Cardiff‟s
Norwegian Church Arts Centre, they are mooching around the sea front, grumpy
and incongruous on a slate grey evening. At the first hint of an interview they
scatter and retrieving them is as challenging as mustering cattle on the plains
of Montana. Eventually a pained Paul Zarzyski is collared and he recovers his
good grace sufficiently to reveal a few details about his life and work.
A professional rodeo rider for many
years, he specialised in “riding the strongest, rankest horses to win a little
money to buy some gas and a few groceries and get on to the next rodeo.” By the
age of forty the knocks had taken their toll and he decided to quit while he
was ahead.“You get hurt pretty bad every once in a while and I had a couple of friends
who got killed in a rodeo arena, then finally your body kinda wears out and I
decided to hang up my spurs, as they say.”
“But I missed it so much. It left a
kinda void in my life, so I blew the dust off my rodeo gear and started to ride
on the “old timers‟ circuit. I could still ride pretty fair but I couldn‟t walk
for a week after, so I finally decided once and for all to quit.”
Zarzyski was lucky. His having to
let go of bronc riding coincided with a rekindling of interest in the epic
poetry of the pioneers and a thirst for the offerings of ontemporary cowboys.
He found that he had the knack of stringing words together and reciting them. Poetry
gatherings replaced the camaraderie of the
rodeo circuit.
“Cowboy poetry is as much about
friendship as about folk art, or tradition or entertainment,” he claims.
For Randy Rieman the poetry is a
chance to rectify the erroneous picture of the cowboy psyche as put about by
Hollywood. Machismo is an element of a tough, physical, outdoor life, but it‟s
only part of the picture.
“My work expresses emotions which run through
all humanity, and, contrary to the image most people have, cowboys experience
those emotions too,” he explains. “Joy, passion, elation, humour, tragedy,
romance, it all comes out in cowboy verse. We live a life that‟s very free of
the bangles and baubles of society and we have the time and space to feel and
express intense emotions.” Rieman’s day today life isn‟t so very different to
that of his forebears during the last century, which is why much of his
repertoire consists of the works of the old masters such as Charles Badger
Clarke and Bruce Kiskaddon.
Any modern stockman can readily
identify with the timeless cadences of Kiskaddon’s “When They’ve Finished
Shipping Cattle in the Fall:”
“Only two men left a standin’
On the job for winter brandin’
And your pardner he’s a loafin’ at
your side.
With a bran’ new saddle creakin’,
Neither one of you is speaking’,
And you feel it’s goin’ to be a
silent ride.
But you savvy one another,
For you know him like a brother,
He is friendly but he’s quiet, that
it all.”
Cowboy poetry does have a tendency
to veer into the hick and mawkish. Sue Wallis, however, disengages herself from
cliche. Hers is the most evocative voice of the touring poets, both in terms of
her written work and her ability to recite. Poems like A Thousand Pretty Ponies
conjure up the space and freedom of the open range without wallowing in
sentiment.
“Over yonder, see them coming,
there’s your Daddy and he’s running
With a thousand head of horses out
of grassy Garvin Basin
They are rippling like a river with
their manes and tails flying
Flashing, glinting colors, proudest
thing I’ve ever seen
And see his hat it’s waving as he
comes riding hard and spurring
Leading all those pretty ponies
pouring down off Garvin’s Rim.”
Wallis’s work has been described as
“a strong Western woman’s vision pronounced in a strong Western woman’s voice,”
but there is more to it than that. The poems in her book Another Green Grass
Lover have a bold, sassy edge; she tells it as it is from the woman’s
standpoint, a factor which is missing from the traditional verse whose
depiction of the female sex is stereotypical something which is perpetuated to
a degree by the modern male poet. This poem is called Mamie.
“Mamie hasn’t been out with a feller
in two or three years.
The sons sa bitches(sic) use her and
leave her in tears
way too often, and far too long
ago
Mamie figures that maybe it isn’t so
healthy to be alone so long,
but her heart is spooked when she
thinks of it
going wrong
ago.
Mamie thinks perhaps she’ll open her
eyes and start looking at men
but her soul stops and her skin clams,
her tongue thickens and her mind
jams,
and Mamie be damned she can’t begin
again.
But she thinks about it
way too often
and far too long
y’ know.”
Rod McQueary, the most taciturn of
the four, specialises in the dry, deadpan delivery of wryly humorous works.
Persuaded to get on the road with his poetry in order to supplement the family
income, he takes a sceptical look at city society and its attendant fads and
health crazes. In “Dangerous Beef‟ he mocks the cholesterol fixated generation,
adopting an understatedly comic tone reminiscent of Garrison Keillor’s style in
Lake Woebegone Days.
It isn’t possible to categorise
cowboy poetry under one all encompassing banner. But the enthusiasm these bards
feel for their art is conveyed in Paul Zarzyski‟s observation when asked to
define the genre.
“...it’s the ring and ricochet of
that jumping, rock and roll cowboy lingo which heads straight for the stirrup
bone of your middle ear.”
