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
The Song of the Hunter
FC 11 L-40
31
Robert L. Laumeyer
Look Beyond
You cannot see a mountain By looking where you trod. You cannot know a man Until you know his God. You cannot see a forest While looking at a tree. You cannot know yourself, Till from dogma you are free
Missouri Cowboy Poetry
Leroy Watts
FC 11 M-46
23
Arnold "Buzz" Benson
Winter Sunset
The falling sun of the winter shortened day, a read globe, appearing to be precariously balanced on the high blue horizon of the distant Black Hills, as it casts its last feeble rays over the snow covered landscape.
Sittin' and A-Grinnin': A Collection of Works
Layle Bagley & Linda Merrill
FC 11 B-11
26
Dave Tingey
Dad's Old Saddlebags
Shortly after my Dad died, I went through his saddle bags.
Wild Prairie Roses: A Collection of Verse by North Dakotans
Shirley J. Mikkelson
FC 11 M-11
72
Lois Ottmann
Our Perfect Creation
Our daughter, our treasure
daughter, treasure, pleasure, love, perfect creation.
Western Travels and Other Rhymes
FC 11 G-27
70
Lysius Gough
Sardeen
My old night horse will jump from taw.
Songs of the Workaday World
FC 11 B-54
63
Berton Braley
Christmas on the Great Lakes
Deck is just a slab of ice, gunnels plastered white, every stay is convered thick with a winter coat; Christmas! But the whistlin' wind's bitter cold tonight, glad I'm not the guy up there pilotin' the boat.
Poetic Works of Henry Lawson
David McKee Wright
FC 11 L-24
181
Henry Lawson
The Last Review
Turn the light down, nurse, and leave me.
The Song of the Hunter
FC 11 L-40
12
Robert L. Laumeyer
Advice to My Son
Girls are cute and sex is fun. I would not lie to my only son. But I have some advice. to keep between us. Think with your head, not with your penis. (end)
Scattered, Lasting Remnants: "Fine Lines" of Poetry and Song
Echo Klaproth
FC 11 K-25
42
Joel Nelson
A dozen broncs stand shivering, the mist is rolling in, there's a slicker on the top rail, and a breaker in the pen. (from "The Breaker in the Pen"). History wrote his epitaph when barbed wire cut the range while he was but an embryo adjusting to the change. (from "The Shadow on the Cutbank").
Some Stuff I've Learnt And Other Stuff
FC 11 H-61
69
Greg Harwood
Tales Never Told
Recall the stories you enjoy
Skylar Harwood, hard times, roller mill, abandoned
Confessions of A Cowboy Poet
FC 11 C-52
76
Bob Christensen
The Museum
The youngster held his grandpa's hand, his eyes were big and wide. "What is it?" Was his childlike quest "how long since it died?" The creature was a buffalo with long and shaggy hair. "I guess son, they'd still be around had their been anyone to care.
More Rhymes of a Ranch Hand
FC 11 L-06
21
Frank D. Lemon
Every Four Years
If I were king, know what I'd do?
Hoofprints And Heartbeats
FC 11 S-50
25
Colen H. Sweeten Jr.
Lingering Rose
From my early childhood I remember.
Grandpa's homestead
Cowboy Stuff: Some of the Poems by Jody Sixkiller
FC 11 W-16
26
Jody Sixkiller Whitlock
Bill and Dude
In Coolidge, Arizona, where wild horses used to roam.
Ride The Silence
FC 11 H-58
81
Linda Hussa
Hays Mountains In Sunset
Watch the sunset? Easy. Sunsets are for those who moan if rain comes two days running. Naw. Not for us who know what waiting brings. I don't watch the western rim catch fire.
Nevada, fire, heat, red, sky
Cowgirl Poetry: One Hundred Years of Ridin' and Rhymin'
Virginia Bennett
FC 11 B-69
45
Linda Hussa
His Cowgirl Rides The Copper Horse
Horse heads hung sleepy over stall doors in the narrow alley of the barn, she perched on the horseshoe keg, he leaned on the anvil, while they talked
Trail Dust : Sketches on the Trail
FC 11 H-03 v. 1
12
W. Howard Hamm
Round Up
When you're riding down th' trail.
Prairie Poetry: Cowboy Verse of Kansas
Jim Hoy
FOLK COLL 11 H-62
20
F. H. Maynard
The Reckless Cowboy
I am a reckless cowboy, the prairie is my home, At the early age of sixteen I first began to roam,
change, range, cowboy
Best Loved Poems of the American West
John J. and Barbara T. Gregg
FC 11 G-09
283
Gertrude Thomas Arnold
Desert Bloom
A glow of purples at set of dawn.
flowers, nature, beauty, life
Singing Sioux Cowboy
FC 11 C-10
68
Ann Clark
After the Round Up Song
One leg over the saddle horn.
harmonica, home
Melodious Poems From the Hills
FC 11 B-58
28
Sandia Bill
The Ghost Town
There's a ghost town on the mesa That was made of clay and stones, Where, now, men like greedy coyotes Search for human bones.
Cowboy Poetry Matters: From Abilene to the Mainstream: Contemporary Cowboy Writ.
Robert McDowell
FC 11 M-54
66
John C. Dofflemyer
Twenty-Sixth Winter
I've wanted to squeeze despair into thin air, discharge bold charity with my Remington muzzle to her ear
Cowboy Poetry: Turning to Face the Wind
FC 11 M-50
86
Jane Ambrose Morton
Bijou View
Poems from Dry Creek
John Dofflemyer
FC 11 D-15
30
Island
We are an island, a green tree oasis between steep waves of golden feed broken by Blue Oaks with leather leaves and the wild wants what waters here.
The Nevada Cowboy's Album of Songs
Republic Features Syndicate, Inc.
FC 11 T-13
16
Dallas Turner (Nevada Slim), Arranger
Gambling on the Sabbath Day
He was so young, so rough and wild,