Windbreak House

. . .
Recently I was asked: Your poetry is about the west, but do you consider yourself to be a "Cowboy Poet"?

A few years ago, I would have said “Definitely not,” since my poetry rarely occurs in iambic pentameter or rhymes.

Today, I’d say, “Yes, but I usually do not write in traditional cowboy poetry form.” My poetry, like that of most of the best traditional cowboy poets, is about the daily working life of the rancher and cowboy, the people whose work helping to preserve America’s once-vast grasslands by raising cattle here.

Here’s some information on how I came to consider myself a cowboy poet, from a letter I wrote to the magazine Northern Lights in early 1999. The magazine is gone, but will be remembered for its quality. I was responding to an article by Charlie Craighead, “Cowboy Poets: A Study in Oxymoronism.”

I enjoyed the article, I said (and now I quote my letter:)

* * *

. . . even the outrageous pun in the title. Of course some cowboy poetry is awful, but as a noted science fiction writer once said when asked why 98% of science fiction is badly written, “Ninety-eight percent of EVERYTHING is awful.” And I’m glad Craighead admits to a smidgen of jealousy-- why can these folks get published when he can’t? He’s flat wrong about the origins of cowboy poetry; the 14th and 15th annual gatherings in Elko explored the Celtic roots of the genre. And check out Gene Logsdon’s "The Whorehouse Bells were Ringing", among other sources.

But I sympathize with Craighead, who has clearly never been to an event like The Cowboy Poetry Gathering sponsored by the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada. I beg to offer a slightly different view.

Invited to my first cowboy poetry gathering, I marched in with a chip on my shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. After all, I’ve been labeled as a “nature writer” (without my consent), I won’t shoot coyotes, and I gave up wearing “cowboy” hats because they blew off in a South Dakota wind on a bucking horse. Worse, I don’t use rhyme because I can’t do it as well as Robert Penn Warren and some of those other rhyming poets I studied in (shh!) graduate school. I know cows and horses, but I still expected to have to show the calluses on my hands and other anatomical features to be admitted.

Nope. I felt welcome when the first cowboy opened the outer door of the auditorium for me, slanting a glance under his hat brim. I said, “Thank you, sir.” He sighed and said, “I was afraid you was one of them liberated women who’d yell at me for opening the door.”

I said, “I’m liberated, but my folks taught me not to be rude,” and opened the second door in the series. He grinned, touched his hat in a thank-you gesture and we walked inside together.

I’m sentimental, under my leathery exterior, so when I hear a really good poem I often have tears in my eyes. I make most of my living speaking about writing in the world of academia where writers compete to show their brilliance by composing wordy sneers at each other’s work. They’ll love Craighead’s piece. If I dared to shed a tear at a poetry reading in that world-- if I was truly moved by a poem-- someone would provide an instant analysis according to preconceived notions before I could open my mouth.

“So,” the academic would say, “do you westerners and cowboy poets just sit around reminiscing about the old West that never existed anyway?”

Before I could shift my quid to say, “Nope,” he’d move on to the next question: “Are you really crying because the rhyme is so bad?”

Nope again. By contrast, at gatherings of cowboy poets, folks who tear up are given decent privacy. No one bustles up saying, “You really must progress to the next stage of your grief in order to maintain a progressive development of your psyche.” Or maybe, “May I share with you why I used to cry? Then I’ll give you the card of my therapist [or-- pick one-- shaman, priest, wellness consultant, financial advisor] who for only $20,000 will fix you.”

Since you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you. I cry at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering when a tall, thin man with a gimpy ankle reads a poem in the voice of my father when I was young. Before he lost his mind and told me my writing was garbage.

I cry when Wally McRae reads a poem about the best dang horse-wrangler he ever knew, how all the men revered him and spoke his name with respect. After ten years or so of hearing the stories, Wally thought he’d heard everything there was to know about the man called “Prock” by his elders. When Wally shook the man’s hand at last, he learned one fact no one had ever thought important enough to mention: that Proctor was black.

I cry when a white-haired cowboy finds me in the crowd and says, “Ma’am, your poetry is a blessing,” even if it doesn’t rhyme.

Go to a Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Mr. Craighead-- you should have done so before offering your opinions-- but it’s not too late. You’ll have a great time. No one will throw you out. You may get to read your own work and get compliments on it.

* * *

My letter was published by Northern Lights in the Spring 1999, issue, Vol. XiV, No. 2, p. 28. I never heard from Mr. Craighead, so I don’t know if he followed my suggestions.

I’ve now been to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko many times and will appear again in January, 2011. (See the links below for more information on this and related events.)

I’m proud to call myself a cowboy poet. And I wear my broad-brimmed hat.

# # #

For more information:

The Cowboy Poetry website.

The Cowboy Poetry website's page featuring me, with a sampling of my poetry.

The Western Folklife Center website with information about the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.

Where in the World is Linda M. Hasselstrom?
A list on this website of my appearances at upcoming events and in various publications.

back to top

 Read More 

. . .
Each summer, my husband George’s son Michael came to stay with us. Eventually, instead of driving to collect him from North Dakota, we’d fly him to Rapid City.

On this particular occasion in the mid 1980s when he was twelve or fourteen years old, he came off the plane clutching several brightly-colored music tapes (this was before CDs) and a large poster depicting the band KISS.

If you don’t know the band KISS, look it up right now so you can picture the scene. One of the most influential rock and roll bands ever, they are still rocking, and still wearing their trademark black and white full-face makeup.

Mike was practically swooning with delight, and told us that he’d been chatting with the band on the whole trip.

I immediately looked at the other passengers, expecting to see the flamboyantly dressed rockers. I was especially nervous about Gene Simmons, the one who always has a tongue that looks a foot long sticking out from beneath his black-encircled eyes.

What I saw were four middle-aged men, eyes cast down, shuffling nervously, and probably hoping I wouldn’t scream, "It’s KISS!"

Michael introduced them to us; they all nodded and smiled. We thanked them for entertaining Michael and they told us he was a fine boy. "We like to slide into town without any fuss," said one of them apologetically as they mingled with the crowd heading for the baggage carousel.

But they didn’t give us free tickets to their concert that night.

# # #

back to top

 Read More 

. . .
When Charlton Heston's party arrived in the La Veta buckskinning camp to publicize his new movie The Mountain Men (made in 1980), armed dog soldiers (campers who served as voluntary police, just as they did in plains Indian tribes) stopped the retinue at the entrance. George returned from the gate a few minutes later shaking his head. "Dog soldiers won't let them in without authentic attire. Have we got some extra clothes to loan them?"

Shortly, Heston strolled into camp wearing his clean buckskin costume from the movie, looking like a beginner. Lines of dusty men in skins black with the grease of a hundred fires hooted and guffawed, repeating legends about men who divorced wives who washed their leathers.

Behind Heston, smiling feebly, came his crew. One woman wore my skirt with her own off-the-shoulder blouse while another had belted George's shirt for a very short-- and historically inaccurate-- dress. Several men had pulled borrowed leather pants over shorts but were wearing flip-flops or sandals. Everywhere, camera lenses three feet long poked out among the mismatched clothes and fringe.

That summer George's son, Mike, was thirteen and a mirror of every sullen teenager I'd known. We'd grown testy about his behavior in another camp earlier in the summer. On the rare occasions when Mike showed up for meals, he gobbled dumbly and departed. If I mentioned firewood, he glared, lower lip pushed so far out I giggled until he stalked off. In daylight, we might spy him in a lump of other gawky juveniles trailing slim girls in buckskins around camp. He usually crawled into his bed roll after we were asleep. We tried to tell ourselves we didn’t smell liquor on his breath.

But when the dog soldiers summoned everyone to the central fire to welcome Heston to camp, Mike materialized, grabbing my sleeve. "Charlton Heston! Can you take his picture for me? Pleasepleaseplease? I'll give you anything."

Fired by the zeal of every mother whose teenager actually speaks to her, I plunged into the crowd, butting elderly women and trampling toddlers. In the center, I braced myself against the jostling herd and craned my neck, looking for Heston. A man so tall I couldn't even see over his leather-covered shoulder pushed me aside.

"Hey!" I yelped, trying to push him back. "Out of my way! I've got to get a picture of Charlton Heston for my son."

A voice behind my ear murmured, "Tell him to turn sideways; you can look through his ears."

The man in front of me turned and said quietly, "Pay no attention to my son. And my apologies, ma'am." Charlton Heston-- yes, I’d yelled at the actor himself-- took my arm and pulled me up beside him. "Now, son,” he said, handing my camera to the man who had spoken in my ear, “take a picture for the lady. "

Just then, Crazy Bear, one of the campers who had been most antagonistic to Heston’s visiting camp, interrupted the formal ceremony, insisting the actor sample a ceremonial stew. When Heston dipped his knife into the pot, he lifted out an old moccasin. Other rendezvous folks surrounded Crazy Bear and dragged him aside; Heston merely smiled at the insult.

Oh, and I was out of film. No, I didn’t get a photograph of Charlton Heston.

That afternoon, the movie folks erected a screen in some trees near camp so that we could watch Heston's movie from the comfort of our camp. It promptly blew down.

Heston rented the La Veta drive-in, announcing that all buckskinners would watch the movie for free. Approximately five thousand people stampeded through the dust to the parking lot and drove, whooping and hollering out the windows, to the outskirts of town. Boisterous souls set the mood, firing black powder and blanks.

As vehicles with old flags and mink hides flying from the antennas pulled into neat rows at the theater, cars full of local families roared away, spraying gravel.

Dozens of us ran for the refreshment stand to beat the crowd. When we pushed through the door, the teenage crew behind the counter stopped giggling and flattened themselves against the back wall, faces pale. As soon as we started ordering junk food, though, they realized we were only human.

We enjoyed the movie immensely, though we gleefully spotted plenty of anachronisms and inaccuracies. When one of the characters uttered good lines, the audience’s ki-yiiiiii, wolf howls, and guns could no doubt be heard all over town. When we spotted vapor trails or power lines in the background of scenes, we groaned and honked our horns.

Several police cars cruised by during the film, and when we left, a couple of them were parked casually beside the road into town, as if to ensure that we turned toward camp.

# # #

For more information:

The Rendezvous Page on this website

back to top

 Read More 

. . .
The best articles I've read about the importance of grasslands is written by John H. Davidson, president of Northern Prairies Land Trust, and appears in the Winter 2010 issue of Saving Land, the publication of the Land Trust Alliance. I urge everyone to read the complete article.

Davidson notes that "Land conservation priorities have favored visually dramatic resources-- mountains, lakes, forests and shores," but neglected the "more visually humble but no less vital resource" of grasslands of the North American prairie.

The complex prairie ecosystem, says Davidson, are repositories of an "ocean of carbon." "We must ask whether it makes sense to spend fortunes on attempts to control releases of carbon from coal-based energy plants and cutting of tropical forests while simultaneously releasing an immeasurable ocean of carbon by plowing up our prairie," says Davidson. "In Nebraska and South Dakota, less than 2% of tallgrass prairie remains," and the mixed and shortgrass prairies that lie to the west are being plowed at an "alarming pace;" an estimated 80% of shortgrass prairie has been converted to crops. The federal system of encouraging plowing native grasses by offering financial payments to corn and grain farmers, says Davidson, is partly responsible for this loss, as is industrial farming, with its resultant increase in grain prices which encourages livestock growers to plow prairie and turn to confinement meat production and genetically modified seeds.

Prairie birds are declining more swiftly than any other birds in North America (www.stateofthebirds.org), and inland floods are increasing, all due to the loss of prairie. The World Wildlife Fund describes the Northern Great Plains as "one of the least protected places on earth."

Northern Prairies Land Trust is working with private ranchers and other landowners in eastern Nebraska and South Dakota to protect native grasses, with more than 100 active projects covering nearly 20,000 acres of unbroken tallgrass prairie. Northern Prairies is working to protect riverside wildlife habitat, wetlands, farms, ranches, and open spaces near cities and towns. Visit www.northernprairies.org to learn more about this important organization.

# # #

For more information:

Northern Prairies Land Trust website

State of the Birds website

back to top

 Read More