PNS Correspondent Jon Christensen, a freelance writer based in Carson City, Nev., is the Great Basin regional editor for High Country News. Zeitlin was impressed. There was something about watching a thousand people riveted to a cowboy poet's story. He likened it to rap and slam poetry. The cowboy poets are trying to express things about ranching life that can't be expressed any other way.
Cowboy poetry is much older than rap.
The Gathering celebrates poetry recited on cattle drives of the late 1800s, as well as poetry being written today. The novel comparison stems from a recognition of common roots in oral traditions and, more importantly, the growing sense that cowboy poetry is the defiant expression of a threatened way of life. Cowboy poetry, like rap, is filled with real life stories and ear-catching rhymes. Folklorists and poets say these movements have reinvigorated American poetry, taking it back from the stuffy ivory tower of post-modern academia. We are a social movement in poetry.