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Article: Cowboy Poets and Cowboy Poetry
- Article from:
- Western Folklore
- Article date:
- April 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright California Folklore Society Spring 2001. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Cowboy Poets and Cowboy Poetry. Edited by David Stanley and Elaine Thatcher. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 392, preface, index. $49.95 cloth, $21.95 paper)
Cowboy Poets and Cowboy Poetry is the first book-length volume to examine this American tradition of occupational verse in all its historical and contemporary complexity and depth. Even better, it does so in a mixed chorus of voices that includes the poets themselves, in addition to folklorists, historians, and creative writers. Naturally, this at times makes for jumpy reading, as a literary analysis invoking iambs and catalexis is followed by a folksy account of picking up cowboy songs in bars and behind the ...