Paul Zarzyski -- Musings from Planet UniPoet:

If we take literally the title to his 1995 collection I AM NOT A COWBOY, then Paul Zarzyski is, simply a poet. A poet who has lived and written for over three decades in the Cowboy West. A poet who, it just so happens, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Montana, where he studied with the esteemed maestro of the musical line, Richard Hugo. A poet, whose self-proclaimed greatest adventures in life include a dozen years trying hard to fit 8-second spur-rides to bares on the rodeo circuit, and 20 consecutive go-rounds spurring the words wild--free-versed, rhymed-'n'-metered, and otherwise--across the open-range stages of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Considered by some an enigma or conundrum and, by others, a wordsmithing maverick, Paul describes himself as just another "human being poet writing about living and dying on Planet Earth." He is the 2005 recipient of the Montana Governor's Arts Award for Literature.