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FOLK COLLECTION 11: The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection

Date of Items: 1890-present
Register Prepared by: Randy Williams and Susan Gross, April 2004
Register Updated by: Randy Williams, 23 December 2009
Excel database transfered to MYSQL and uploaded (replacing PHP data): Colin Jackson, Fall 2010
MYSQL database updated: Randy Williams, January 2012
Linear Feet:20

Historical Note & Provenance

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.

Scope and Content

The collection consists of 20 linear feet of books on cowboy poetry, including press and self published works. The collection can be accessed through USU Libraries online catalog.


As well, poem titles and keywords found in each book in the collection are included in the database below. To use, type in the search term. Tip: Try and use an uncommon word from the poem to ensure less "hits." For instance, if you enter "boots" you will get many hits; but if you enter "bones" you will most liley get fewer "hits" or poems and find the item you seek faster. To return to the search page, click "home" at the bottom of the page.

Search:

Poetry table.

First Previous Next Last
IDBook TitleComposerIndexPagesAuthorPoem TitleFirst LinesKeywords
22085 The Mystique Of Grouse Creek FC 11 S-64 64 Elden K. Shaw Uncle Ray This poem's about my favorite Uncle, Ray, Who lived in a very different time and day, When story telling was considered the norm, And he was a master of this archaic art-form.
22086 The Mystique Of Grouse Creek FC 11 S-64 66 Elden K. Shaw Great Uncle George Uncle George lived only a stone's throw away, And at times I visited him practically every day. Especially when my brother went to first grade, I oft "helped" him gather the eggs that were laid.
22087 The Mystique Of Grouse Creek FC 11 S-64 68 Elden K. Shaw Rollo James Kimber Rollow James Kimber was his given name, And though he enjoyed only modest fame, When I was a boy he was a hero to me, Since he was the cowboy I wanted to be.
22088 The Mystique Of Grouse Creek FC 11 S-64 70 Elden K. Shaw Thomas Thomas One of the earliest settlers of our town, Was a Sheep man of somewhat local renown, Cotton Thomas still has a small calim to fame, Since today the "Basin" bears his unusual name.
22089 The Mystique Of Grouse Creek FC 11 S-64 73 Elden K. Shaw Going Home Someday I'll go home again. Up the hill and down the lane, To that little house I know so well, Tucked away in that mountain dell. There sitting upon the porch will be, Grandma and Grandpa waiting for me.
22090 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 14 Slow Falling Rain Thunder rumbled in my dreams this morning, it was distant but plain. I tried to hold back the day and the dawning, tried to dream us some rain. I heard the horses stampede to the stables, they always know.
22091 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 16 Uvalde County Now the days have been many I've drifted these ranges, Many's the night I have slept on the ground, But the sun it won't rise here to darken my shadow, Uvalde County is where I am bound.
22092 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 17 Laurie Wagner Buyer Cherry Red Winter Finite questions bring no absolute answers. The power of mountains stare down daily life. Caravans of buses streak across the globe. A microcosm of ocean-blue swamp begs forgiveness.
22094 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 18 On a June Afternoon I sit on the stoop eating fresh fruit: bananas and strawberries from Mexico, Anjou pears from Argentina, oranges from California, apples from Oregon.
22095 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 19 Cotyledon A slender white arm rises out of the compost, like a ballerina in arabesque.
22096 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 20 Witness to a Death A young flicker smashes into the glass of my narrow sunroom window. She falls. A stone to the ground. Rising from winter weeds the wind ruffles orange-shafted feathers.
22097 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 21 Blizzard Night Sleeping tucked in with sorrow allows no surface for joy or warmth only the cold edge of anger caught in the heavy thigh that presses mine, the weight of wild worry around.
22098 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 22 Five-strand with Stays The fence trembles when I touch it, a barrier to bulls, and cows with calves, to elk that leap over at low spots, and to antelope that bend ballerina bodies to slide under, white bellies brushing sage.
22099 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 23 Hay Meadow willow wild redtop river bend butterfly shooting star silver weed snipe wooden bridge foxtail fringed gentian.
22100 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 24 Jon Chandler On the Rio Grande at South Fork The lace-thin leather of the boot's sole succumbs to the erosion of matter, rending microscopically at the point of greatest pressure allowing a gap that ruptures further with each step.
22101 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 25 Texas 1968/1983/1998 Opal--pregnant with Daryl Horn's child the night she turned fifteen-- doesn't remember much; a little pain, a little blood, the odor of Daryl's old man's English Leather and cigarettes and the way the shadows cast by headlights played.
22102 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 27 The Once-Gangly Kid Looks Back Standing before the tiny campfire at dawn shivering from cold and anticipation the smell of the scratchy wool blanket inside the flannel cocoon of the sleeping bag, shielding me from the alpine night.
22103 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 28 Bob Cherry Collage with Dark Dog The prism you tie with thread to the kitchen windowshade is cutglass, a small jewel to separate the colors of light not yet in our winter sky. From each side of the table, we taste out morning tea, wait and watch the dark dog separate itself from blackness.
22104 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 29 Fair Grounds at Fort Worth Second summer at carnival and Fred and Sally and Cal and Alice and me all went free to ride and hear the calliope. And watch ourselves in the mirrors.
22105 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 31 Innuendo to a Final Frontier You see the filching wolverine but only when your fish are gone-- and still she moves alive behind your eyes, where she catches for each of your blurred suspicions of her a full view of you twice.
22106 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 32 Quartet Two cranes cried outside the darkened bedroom window last evening, a tide-filling slough separating each from each and me from drunken laugher in the harbor. Fearing night flight.
22107 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 33 Two Forces must have worked on stone shards, plain and separate halves from greater rock, tortured, smoothed, and tumbled from the cold stream where I wade like a Sisyphus to his task.
22108 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 34 Gaydell Collier Black Hills Evening Riding low on the western hills the sun throws shadows long long to the rising moon they skip over gullies, slide through treetops reaching thinning stretching.
22109 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 35 Scent of Baskets Grass grows thick at the horseshoe bend where the creek runs deep peepers trill a dragonfly darts in flashes of blue shadows float upon the water and root-straggles hang from the cutaway bank.
22110 Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson FC 11 W-30 37 When the Sodergreen House Burned Down Unlike modern houses framed with concrete and glass, This house was hewn from heartwood with a meaning to its past, When strong men worked with gnarled hands and double-bitted ax To knit the logs together, dove-tailed, and made to really last.