Lifestyle
This Cowboy Poet Will Remind You Why Luckenbach is so Special
The Texas cowboy is an American icon, so why don’t we know more about cowboy poetry? This is their ode to working hard days and long nights.
Cowboy poetry is an often overlooked tradition of the American west. What began as storytelling between cowboys on ranches evolved into both a campfire tradition and a literary homage to the beginning of the cowboy myth.
The most important part about cowboy poetry? Offering an insider’s perspective where the words about late night campfires and tough wrangling days come from the heart. Cowboy poetry isn’t solely historical, either.
Great poets like Walt Perryman and Waddie Mitchell are still producing amazing poems of life on the ranch and in the case of Perryman, odes to West Texas.
Keeping cowboy poetry alive is an important step to preserving one more oral tradition that could be lost today as we move away from working outside, guided by the hours of the sun. The themes are straightforward: ranch work, the landscape, and the cowboy code.
Silly stories and sad anecdotes also regularly work their way into the lines, as does a feeling of nostalgia for once what was. That’s where Walt Perryman performing his poem, “West Texas”, in Luckenbach, Texas comes in.
