For the last eight years, Mancos resident and former Fort Lewis College education professor Lindy Simmons has produced an original two-hour Thursday night variety show involving day performers from the Durango Cowboy Poetry Gathering, which has sold out numerous times before the start of the festival, including this year’s festival.
Held last weekend, the Durango Cowboy Poetry Gathering brings in anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 attendees. The weekend of festivities includes art gallery openings, trail and train rides, film screenings, including a documentary premiere and more, at eight different venues around Durango, as well as a parade featuring the Diamond Z English Shire Horses from Utah.
Here, Lindy Simmons discusses the art and draw of cowboy poetry:
On what makes cowboy poetry distinct ...
I always thought of it as a very natural form of art because the stories needed to be written down. Everybody enjoys something that has rhythm and rhyme. Most of the cowboy poets do write in rhyme. It’s very rare that you find anyone doing free verse among the cowboy poets.
On the origins of cowboy poetry ...
It started way back with the guys around the campfire, of course, who have stories to tell in the evening. Some of the stories were actually put to music, so it was the birth of cowboy music as well. (There was) a lot of influence from old Scottish and old Irish music.
On the performers and poems featured at the poetry gathering ...
There is very strong feeling at the gathering that they try to invite people who are real working cowboys or have been working cowboys. There are a few who slip in who (aren’t, but) are wonderful musicians and poets. But the large majority of these people actually live on ranches or have worked on ranches, but they know horses and cows.
The poets and songwriters are masterful. They’re able to take a good story and really make it entertaining. ... They usually memorize. Very seldom do they read a piece. It’s extremely entertaining.
I would say that 75 percent of the poetry is humorous. Humor always makes a good story. We all like telling jokes and telling funny stories, and adding that rhythm and rhyme to a story makes it extra special.
On what has resonated about the West in these poems and stories ...
I think a lot of it is the romance of the Old West. There’s a romantic side to the cowboys and the adventure of the West. A lot of the people who are in our audience are people who grew up in the 1950s, some earlier, some a little later. They knew the Old West from movies, they knew the old Western shows that were on television. ... A lot of those stories were romanticized. There were ones that perhaps weren’t really the true stories of the West. But the idea that they have of the Old West really draws them.
On what she would tell a person who says cowboy poetry is not their thing ...
I tell them they really ought to come and see a show. And I’ve had times where I’ve actually recited some poetry for them. Because the stories are good, and if you like a story, you’ll like cowboy poetry. People, usually, if they let themselves do it, they really do learn a lot about the West and about cowboy life. I usually don’t let them get away with it.