He’s given us a chronology of the cowboy poetry sub-genre, reaching back to nineteenth and early twentieth century archival cowboy verse, and placed it where it belongs in the tradition of light verse narrative, ballad, tall tale, shaggy dog story, folk yarn even gone so far as to show a continuum between what we would recognize as folk art – comparable say to old painted milk pails and weathered door mirrors and wagon wheel driveway markers or chandeliers – and verse satire or truly western rural free verse. The best cowboy poetry I’ve read speaks poignantly – if with the delightful country corniness, and insouciant joy and humour – of a justly celebrated but vanishing ranching way of life.Ken Mitchell’s accomplishment here then is considerable. You will find they all speak the authentic lingo of the cowboy. Rhyming Wranglers includes not only poets from pioneer times, and the current stars of the cowboy poetry festival circuit, but such major outlaw poets as Sheri-D Wilson, Sid Marty, Doris Daley and Corb Lund. And there’s a lot of cowboy philosophy here too, from the no-nonsense creed of Robert Service’s “The Quitter” to the subtler values of Sid Marty’s deeply moving “The Rider with Good Hands”. The whole spectrum of range life is presented: the clamour and danger of a cattle stampede the fragrant beauty of a prairie night the unexpected loss of a loved one. You will find plenty to laugh about from “The day Leonard taught me to chew snuff” by Denis Nagel, to Neil Meili’s “The Old Dry Guy and the Bath”. In Rhyming Wranglers, you will meet men who are “double damn tough” and women who are even tougher. In gatherings and festivals from Fort Qu’Appelle to Pincher Creek, from Maple Creek to Stony Plain (and beyond), cowboy poets are chanting the praises of the ranching culture as never before. There is a cultural movement sweeping the Western plains like a prairie fire: cowboy poetry.
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