Paul Zarzyski -- Musings from Planet UniPoet:

I’ve made a couple of apologies lately to the Western Folklife Center for my “bloglessnesses,” for my “blog deficiencies,” my “blog-gone-blank.” That old saw, “writer’s block,” does not exist in The Book According to CZARzyski (actually it’s a pamphlet), so unfortunately I can’t use that as an excuse. Simply, every minute of creative time has been staked claim to by the brace of CD projects I’ve been working on with Open Path Music in San Jose. Yes, two records that evolved over 11 months in a single studio under the direction of one super-ebullient jazz-artist Gordon Stevens (who, incidentally, played with the 60s rock band Moby Grape in their latter years) and his trio of equally brilliant sous-producers, Tim Volpicella, Lee Ray, and Scott Sorkin, as well as a troupe of virtuoso musicians--including the wives of AND the producers themselves--plus humbled me, the sole voice, except for the occasional, and very spontaneous, inclusion of a chorus? I know what you’re thinking: “Talk about your numerological snafu filled with egotistical pitfall discombobulations! Talk about too many chefs deflating the soufflé!” Nope, not when, to borrow a passage from my poem, Hard Traveling, “…we lay bare / all our magic, our miracles, all / the musical truths we are made of….” Which, once we respectfully did so, allowed our disparate artistic sensibilities to mix into what has become for us a soulful elixir of emotional honesty, a heartful grailful of human spirit-booster.

Sometime in the coming blogful weeks, perhaps we’ll enter a cut from each of the two choreographies--COLLISIONS OF RECKLESS LOVE and ROCK ‘N’ ROWEL. I don’t need to say much more than I already have about the experience, the process. Even the liner notes are minimal, reduced to a short Artist Statement in each digi-pack tri-fold--no accompanying booklets, no transcriptions of poems, although roughly half of the total 29 cuts were plucked from my books.

What I would like to speak to, however, is The Gathering’s role in both germinating, and nurturing, thousands of friendships since its 1985 kick-off. THOUSANDS of people whose lives have been enriched--moreso spiritually than financially, though let’s admit it aloud here in print, there are those involved who put commerce before compadres. Me, I wouldn’t trade the friendships bestowed upon me by two decades of Elkos for any amount of mazuma. To the IRS’s chagrin & suspicion, my gross (yes GROSS) annual bardic income has varied between 3K and 30K since 1981, when “making a life” of Poetry first began to transmogrify into “making a living.” And you can call impecunious me “foolish” for saying this, but (I shit you not) most days I feel wealthy enough to hire Ted Turner to shovel my walk. I rodeoed in the ‘70s with The Clark Twins, Doug and Don (from BUTTE!) whose father rodeoed before them. I will always be grateful to have crossed trails with them. Though they never won much in the arena, they won this gunsel-from-Wisconsin’s admiration for life for having welcomed me into their cowboy world, for having treated me as an equal and considering me worthy of their friendship. Haven’t seen them for decades. Hope they’re okay. Moreover, I hope I get a chance before I cash-in to extend in person my gratitude. Point being, I remember them relaying to me what their Dad impressed upon them as young boys--I think he went by Tex and, according to Doug and Don, Tex said “Fellers, you can brag to your friends that your Daddy’s a millionaire, cuz I got a million friends who, at the drop of a hat, would each give me a buck if I asked for it.” With inflation adjustments factored-in, I ditto Tex--in no small part because of The Gathering. Anyone out there reading this know Ted Turner’s phone number? It snowed last night.

Re-enter Gordon Stevens. Seat him in the front row in the Ruby Room at the Convention Center two, maybe three, Gatherings ago. I don’t recall the theme of the session, but it likely focused on who Charlie Russell called “Nature’s People,” and who--you’re damn right, I said “WHO”--I refer to as “the fellow beings with whom (a third time, WHO) we inhabit Planet Earth.” I recited my poem, “For The Stories,” about the time Charles “Bird” Parker, while touring through rural America, stopped to play a few sax choruses for a cow, “because bird heard animals love / music, too.” I enjoy performing the piece, the highlight of which was an opportunity to recite it to an audience of a thousand strong at the Reno Hilton with The Reno Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by maestro Barry Jekowsky on stage behind me. The annual event is called Rhythm and Rawhide, as it’s a fundraiser for both The Orchestra and The Reno Rodeo Foundation. It was, of course, a snap for me to present poems celebrating rodeo, but I had to dig deeper to salute the symphony, which did include a saxophone player. As I moved into the closure of the poem…

…I picture a bedraggled farmer
thrilled out of his drudgery
the night Betsy’s milk output tripled for life
after an otherwise run-of-the-mill day
when our world moved four bars,
four measures from its normal
orbit, stirring, in turn, the whole
infinite universe toward…

…I began to turn slowly, timing it perfectly, in order to deliver with a bow…

the unpredictability of what is

…to the 70 or 80 musicians sitting silent during this solo voce moment, the poems venerating last line…

musically possible, humanly perfect.

(Sorry for the sidetrack.) So I do this non-cowboy (because the lead bovine role is played by a Holstein) poem in the Ruby Room--very likely with my introduction that proclaims Charlie Parker playing for a milk cow most definitely connected out there in the Ol’ Cowpoke Cosmos, The Musical Universe, to the early cowpunchers, driving the great herds north, humming lullabies to quell stampedes while on nighthawk duty. The poem is published in my last book, set in cement, so to speak. My editor, Barbara March, and I fine-tooth-combed EVERY DANG WORD!, In fact, I distinctly recall consulting The Random (bunk) House Dictionary, which even offers an illustration to its entry, “saxophone.” The definition reads, and I quote: “a musical wind instrument consisting of a conical, usually brass tube with keys or valves and a mouthpiece with one reed.” I repeat, “with keys or VALVES.” Therefore, in opting for the word that rang most musically to my ear in the rendering of the poem’s passage, I chose

… his fingers
slowly crawling over the VALVES

because, it’s obvious as the substantial proboscis I sport upon my Polish-Italian pan, isn’t it, that VALVES further lavish upon the line the lovely Ls of “slowly” and “crawling,” thus effecting the melodic motion of Bird’s fingers in the early morning sun? “Keys?” No poet worth his or her pepper would ever choose “keys” over “VALVES” under these syllabic circumstances!

So this little (sorry, Gordon) silver-haired stranger perched in the front-row spitting distance from the stage--sitting there sans boots and hat or garb of any ilk that even remotely approaches “western,” let alone “cowboy,” unless he was sporting bucking bronco embossed speedos beneath his San Jose duds--approaches me after my perf and, as I choose to recall it, without even introducing himself, whispers in my ear, “I love the Charlie Parker poem, but they’re keys, Paul--a sax does not have valves; they’re KEYS.” Had he not been my elder, I’d have been obligated by The Code to shoot him in the shoulder! Besides, the poor feller couldn’t possibly have known how diligently we zeroed-in upon each and every word of the 62-poem, 137-page WOLF TRACK ON THE WELCOME MAT! Nor could he have known that producer Jim Rooney (another Elko-sparked grand friendship) and I recorded “For The Stories” on our CD, THE GLORIOUS COMMOTION OF IT ALL--or that a phenomenal saxophonist, Jim Hoke, who nailed an otherworldly subliminal riff to Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” did not correct my diction during our several takes. In fact, I can recall quizzing Jim--walking up to him and pointing to the friggin’ gizmos on his sax and asking “what do you call these things?” To which he replied, “buttons, keys.” “Not valves?” I retort. “Yah--buttons, keys, valves--you hear all three,” he assures me.

You bet. The poet’s mission is “precision-of-diction,” in both meaning and music. I’ve surveyed a hundred horn players since my first encounter with my future producer and, yes, subsequent dear, dear friend, Gordon Stevens. The results are in and they’re unanimous. A saxophone is equipped with keys, not valves. Whoever edited the 1979 revised (in a pig’s ass) edition of The Random (BUNK!) House Dictionary will for certain, if I ever find out their whereabouts, receive a shoulder wound. On second thought, maybe I should instead send them gift copies of our new CDs. Their glitch had a little to do with triggering friendship--but only because, luckily, I’m a colossal aficionado of valor. I mean, imagine Gordon strolling up to Robert De Niro’s psycho character, ex-marine Travis Bickle, in Taxi Driver. Mohawk haircut hidden beneath my beaver lid, all I could think of saying in response to ol’ Gord’s correction of my poem was “You talkin’ to me? ARE YOU talkin’ to MEEEE!”

Although, granted, this is one of the more unusual tales of an Elko first step to friendship, I could tell story after vivid story detailing glorious close encounters of the umpteenth kindred-spirit kind, all thanks to The Gathering. I’m sure every single attendee over the past 22 go-’rounds could do the same. How many altogether? Twenty-five thousand? Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand friendships? Hard to say. But I do know that our cowboy west is a far more unified, communicative landscape of the heart-’n’-mind BECAUSE of Elko. As another friend, thanks AGAIN to The Gathering, put it eloquently in a letter last spring:

I’m thankful there are a few touchstones like the Gathering where we can come together to sense and share spiritual values in a way that is both open and implied. In that respect, the Gathering is actually Poetry Itself, a way of seeking and finding and sharing the essence of life through roundabout, metaphorical routes. Our words in our poems are merely little power plants of energy. At the Gathering we sometimes don’t need the words anymore, the atmosphere is so charged with the energy still spinning from previous Gatherings. When we hit that wordless state and feel that energy spinning, we are really knocking on the window of the spirit world. I remember you talking, Paul, about poems that come knocking--the process works both ways.

I am almost sure that what has allowed the Gathering to grow into this function is its inlusiveness. If it made those of us unwelcome who are not directly involved with ranch/cowboy life, or even rendered us mere spectators, it would be only a meeting or another Old Boys Club.

Sally-Jo Bowman
May 20, 2006

I could not agree more--especially with Sally-Jo’s keenly felt perception that the Gathering has become Poetry Itself. And Music Itself? I’m guessing that the majority of performers in the midst of this spirit have experienced precisely what it took an audience member from outside the culture to articulate. I might (?) have touched on a related facet in a piece titled Gratitude, which I wrote for the Spring/Summer 2006 WAYS OF THE WEST, the Western Folklife Center’s newsletter:

The Trail between performer and audience, between spectator and player, traverses equally both ways. Forget hierarchy. Spectator takes a seat, performer takes a stage, and, should the two connect at all, they do so on that common, human ground where hearts and minds and souls commune…. When you cut through the occasional egotistical hindrances with which performers--and sometimes audiences--sully this creative journey, what shines is an egalitarian process of giving and receiving to the nth power. An exchanging of gifts, if you will….

Could I have, should I have, identified the gifts as “Friendship?” Too much of a stretch? Your call.

Circle all the way back with me to the CD projects with Open Path Music and I promise to bring this screed to conclusion. In my acknowledgment note to COLLISIONS OF RECKLESS LOVE, I begin by saying “This record ascended out of Friendship, nothing more, everything less” I could have just as readily exclaimed “This CD exists BECAUSE of The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada; BECAUSE at Cowpoke Woodstock we roll out a plush green carpet of western hospitality (a skosh different than the muddy welcome mats of the original Woodstock); BECAUSE our hero, Buck Ramsey, defined a cowboy song or poem as any song or poem a cowboy enjoys listening to and we KNOW that he would be the first to nod a firm “you bet” to the extrapolation that a cowboy poetry/music/culture fan is anyone who enjoys celebrating whatever song or poem he or she deems “cowboy,” most socio-political-philosophical, literati-lariati fences be damned and/or busted through. This CD (these CDs) exist BECAUSE, first and foremost, in the early 1980s a “tribe” of folklorists (non-cowboys all!) conceived the idea of organizing a cowboy poetry festival somewhere in the American West--a one-time event, they projected--and BECAUSE this seed was germinated and nurtured BY THESE FOLKLORISTS thus evolving over purt-near a quarter century into what we experience today.

Here it is, oh mighty patient blog-readers, the proverbial “chase” you’ve been waiting for me to cut to for pages: It took a Polish-Italian kid from a one-horse town in northern Wisconsin, who so happened to find his way west and become a Rodeo Poet, 52 years to cross trails with a dear friend, whose own childhood is deep-rooted in the very Montana the Rodeo Poet now calls home--52 years to finally befriend Gordon Stevens, after FINALLY learning that a saxophone is equipped with KEYS, not valves!

All thanks and praise to folklorists Jim Griffith, Mike Korn, Meg Glaser, Hal Cannon, Elizabeth Dear, Carol Edison, Pat Jasper, Suzi Jones, Blanton Owen, Gary Stanton, David Brose, Greta Swenson, Drew Beisswenger, Elaine Thatcher, Jennie Chinn, Lynn Ireland, Jens Lund, Warren Miller, Andreas Graham, Dennis Coehlo, Steve Siporin (the founders), and to David Stanley, Craig Miller, Nicholas Vrooman, Bob McCarl, Guy Logsdon, and recent and current staff Charlie Seemann, Debbie Fant, Christina Barr, Sally Haueter, Steve Green, Kevin Davis…, as well as, no doubt, a bunch more whose folkloric wisdom and hard work have contributed to the growth, the strength, of The Gathering over the past 25-plus years, since several of the folks above expressed aloud in unison (I’ll bet) their notion that cowboy poetry might still be vibrantly alive in The West. How right they were. Oh, (thank our patron saint, Charles Badger Clark, for cueing them) how right they were.