Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering

Rating:
Summary: A broad-based collection of the best in the genre.
Review: As someone who became interested in cowboy poetry in only the last few years, I've found this collection to contain some of the best authors, both old and new. The old cowboy poetry always rhymed, and often had the cadence you feel while horseback, chasing a herd of cows. It was politically conservative, simple, and often written in a wistful style that recognized the changing nature of the American West. This collection does the genre proud. Its list of authors provides a starting point for further excursions in this art form. Much of the new cowboy poetry has gone the way of poetry in general, consisting of long-winded liberal whines full of obscure and meaningless, but politically-correct, allusions. This book has none of that, and meets the criterion for poetry taught me by my first school teacher in an old one-room schoolhouse, "It ain't much of a poem, if it don't rhyme".