FOLK COLLECTION 11: The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection
Folk Coll 11 is Utah State University's cowboy poetry collection. The collection, originally created
by a generation donation by the L. J. and Mary Skaggs Foundation, includes books gathered
during a fieldwork project in the early 1980s to document cowboy poetry in the U.S. west (see Folk
Coll 11f). From this important fieldwork project came the impetus for the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering held in
January 1985 in Elko, Nevada. Since that time, each January, the Fife Folklore Archives staff take the collection
and Access database (that details each book, poem, author, first line and key words), to the National Cowboy Poetry
Gathering for offsite use. Through University purchases and generation donations from poets and collectors, this collection continues to grow.
Book Title
Composer
Call #
Pages
Author
Poem Title
First Lines
Keywords
Hogwash Hokum and Heifer Dust
FC 11 W-37
89
George Wolstad
The cougar brothers
story
Rattle
Alan Fox
FC 11 R-36
118
M.E. Hope
Cow Songs
I do not doubt that he loved the long-backed cows
A Living Tradition -- South Dakota Songwriters Songbook Volume 1
George B. German Music Archives
FC 11 G-02
122
Boyd Bristow
Tonight
Darlin', I just got started.
Best Loved Poems of the American West
John J. and Barbara T. Gregg
FC 11 G-09
64
author unknown
The Ballad of Tonopah Bill
Tonopah Bill was a desert rat who had traveled the gold camps through.
rumor, Rio Grande, luck, optimism, Milky Way, St. Peter, lawless mining crew, Saint, bluff, heaven, story, humor
A Living Tradition -- South Dakota Songwriters Songbook Volume 1
George B. German Music Archives
FC 11 G-02
VII
Jack Kreitzer
Introduction
For tens of hundreds of thousands of years,
Trail Dust of a Maverick
FC 11 B-15
144
E.A. Brininstool
Cattle Land's Farewell
There ain't no Cattle Land no more!
past, fences, fencing, grazing, range, barbed wire, progress
Cowboy Poetry: Contemporary Verse by Duke Davis
Janice and Mason Coggin
FC 11 D-10
200
Duke Davis
A Cowboy Prayer
I thank you, Lord, for all that you've given me.
The Columbine Remembers
Anna Bowie May
FC 11 M-26
79
Frances May
To Dorothy, February 1972
Lord, grant me the strength
Fenced Trails
FC 11 B-24
31
Bruce Brockett
The Ring-Tailed Tooter
"I'm a ring-tailed tooter," yelled Dusty Ben.
gun, shooting, show off, braggart, straight shooter, action, fight, asking for trouble, mean, fearless, Brazos Bill, death, killing, forty-five -P-?-?-p-?-?-?-?-?-?
Steering With My Knees
Paul Zarzyski
FOLK COLL 11 Z-5
133
Paul Zarzyski
Benny Reynolds' Bareback Riggin'
A bacon slab a-boiled black in oil every day Ain't as soggy as the surcingle he folds whatever twisted way he wants to, heck it always has sprung back Like a flapping magic bird pulled from his riggin' sack,
bareback, rodeo, age
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
93
Sean Sexton
May Darkness Restore
May darkness restore pur youth to these hands. Life has kept our love in arrears- time will take us to faraway lands.
love, aging, growth
Confessions of A Cowboy Poet
FC 11 C-52
85
Bob Christensen
The Lifer
Life in prison was the sentence, not much chance of parole. Endless days of doing nothing dulls the body and the sole. Oh, it's not like I'm alone here, friends and cousins they're here too.
Trail Dust
FC 11 K-32
11
E.J. Kirchoff
Mother Nature Takes a Hand
Old horse, this rain a- comin' down is sure a pretty sight. It started yesterday at noon. No let up in the night. And still it's fallin' steady. Lots of water has come down. This sure will bring new life to grass that's withered, parched and brown.
Prairie Poetry: Cowboy Verse of Kansas
Jim Hoy
FOLK COLL 11 H-62
91
Dennis Anderson
Rodeo High
The whistle blows - I don't hear it - I feel it Like an electrical current jolting me Into the realization that It's over,
excitement, joy, rodeo
Cowboy Poetry: The Gathering
FC 11 W-28
17
Michael Whitaker
The Gathering
They pulled the chuck wagon by the creek, unhitched and watered up the team.
Western Poems
FC 11 R-02
25
Col. Charles D. Randolph "Buckskin Bill"
Buckskin Bill's Farewell
Goodbye old friends.
Ever and Always I Shall Love the Land
FC 11 G-01
66
Clell Goebel Gannon
Countless
What though we count the miles to distant stars.
atoms, light years, measurement, timelessness, beauty
Cowboy Poetry Matters: From Abilene to the Mainstream: Contemporary Cowboy Writ.
Robert McDowell
FC 11 M-54
31
Virginia Bennett
Social Justice
In an orange grove outside of Phoenix an artificial forest where pesticides dwell,
Cowboy Poetry: Turning to Face the Wind
FC 11 M-50
154
Jane Ambrose Morton
Cowboy Culture
The Windmill Man
FC 11 E-15
1
Richard Elloyan
The Aspen Trees
Oh lay me down beneath a gold and crimson canopy.
Cowboy Poetry: The Reunion
Virginia Bennett
FC 11 B-33
110
Colen Sweeton
Daddy's Bells
My daddy was a freighter, his wagons rolled across the West, with daddy in the driver's seat, a silver chain across his vest.
Poems by Skinny
FC 11 R-41
27
Skinny Rowland
The Secret Life
Now Jimmy you tie up that horse, then get washed up to eat, comb our hair and tuck in your shirt, and clean off those mmuddy feet.
Cowboy Poems from Mona Flatts
FC 11 R-28
41
Scott Redington
The Wyoming Cottonwood
Growing in disorganized profusion along the rivers?
Slabs of the Sunburnt West
FC 11 S-01
48
Carl Sandburg
Feather Lights
Macabre and golden the moon opened a slant of light
Tokens in an Indian Graveyard
FC 11 H-57
67
Linda Hussa
Badger Mountain
Beyond Chinatown sand, bitterbrush, horse brush, shad scale, and a shout of hissing chilled me. I knew no desert beast of such an open-mouthed warning until a four-cornered pillow raced across the broken ground roward my horse.
fetlock, brush, hole, eyes peered