For the New York Times: Jared Stanley on Nevada's National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

Jared Stanley has penned an essay about Nevada and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering for the New York Times! "The poets have come not only to practice a tradition born of work and regional identity, but to expand the idea of this ever-changing place," writes the poet and artist in "Work Songs of the Cowboy Poets." An excerpt:

...As the historian Richard White once wrote, “The mythic West imagined by Americans has shaped the West of history just as the West of history has helped create the West Americans have imagined.” It’s a chance to adapt an old story.

At the Elko Convention Center, a painted tarp frames the stage: a cloudless blue sky and the dun prow of a mesa jutting skyward. The performers are introduced by name, hometown and occupation, the last of which often involves manual labor. Here, the ballad tradition is strong. The rhythms of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Robert Service, plus classic cowboy poems like Buck Ramsey’s “Anthem,” thump through the performances. There are odes to tools, references to John Wayne, laments about bad weather.

 

Dan Thurston, from Elko, in a short-sleeve plaid shirt and a bolo tie, recites a poem called “Fire.” His story of being caught in a brush fire with only a watering hose evinces a connection to landscape, community and the changing fire ecology of the Intermountain West that can be hard to see from far away, even from Reno.

 

Many of the poets have been here before...