THE METAMORPHIC TRANSMUTATIONAL ALCHEMY CALLED ELKO

Elko is not merely addictive, it’s life-altering. Somebody, far more ambitious than I, should gather and catalog the hundreds upon hundreds of testimonials by all those who, ever since attending their first Gatherings, have experienced Cowpoke-Woodstock-Positive-Flashbacks-of-Hopeful-Joyful-Creativity-To-The-Umpteenth-Power-Max. At my very same 21st mentioned above—the one at which I bucked off, pulled the ol’ hang-‘n’-drag, tore the crotch outta my brand new Wranglers and lost my lucky hitched-horsehair hatband in the blog-riding event—I scored in the high 80s during another perf where I debuted the light-sided side-effects of enterin’-up in Elko. Without further adieu, I give you

The Polish-Hobo-Mafioso-Rodeo-Poet’s TOP 15 (yes, ladies and gentlemen, half again as many as David Lettermen’s Top 10)—Indicators That You Have Recently Returned Home From THE 2007 ELKO COWBOY POETRY GATHERING:

#15. You can’t keep from answering your phone Howdy, Parrrd.

#14. Grandma! You’ve exclaimed, It’s purt-near as good as watching Deadwood!

#13. After eating at The Star, all other spaghetti tastes raw.

#12. You’ve witnessed so many old fat cowboys acting like teenagers, you’ve quit your yoga and pilates classes and have taken up team roping.

#11. Your credit card statement has to be delivered by Leroy’s Crate-It-‘n’-Freight-It.

#10. Your spouse still doesn’t believe your pocketsful of souvenir matchbooks marked MONA'S are from “Elko’s finest bistro.”

#9. You’re convinced matching Carhartt bathrobes will make the perfect Valentine's Day gift.

#8. You’re hoping the personal license plate “Spur Me Babe" is still available. (For your Volvo)

#7. You’re hoping your state, too, will someday legalize gambling, prostitution, and rhyme-‘n’-meter in public places.

#6. You’ve heard so many sick Brokeback Mountain jokes, you’ll never count sheep to fall asleep again.

#5. In recurring nightmares, you’ve died and gone to a place where everyone yodels.

#4. You were sure you’d seen EVERYthing until you saw Wallace McRae drunk on picon punch.

#3. Re-entry into normal life hasn’t been this difficult since your alien abduction.

#2. The box marked FREE! For your spring yard sale overflows with UN-wrapped Michael Martin Murphey CDs.

AND THE NUMBER 1 SIGN THAT YOU HAVE JUST RETURNED FROM ELKO 2007, Ladies & Gentlemen (drumrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroll, please) ! ! ! ! ! !

#1. With James Brown gone, you’re proclaiming Glen Ohrlin “The NEW Godfather of Soul!”

                                  BUB-BYE TO THE BLOG

Elko’s a contagious place, alright. The Cowboy Poetry bug runs rampant and if you spend much time there, chances are you’ll contract it, become infectious, catch yourself speaking in bardic tongues and, thus, spreading the wordsmith-wealth. It doesn’t help to uncoil your wildrag from around your throat and snub it up over your stage-robbin’ face bandito-style. It doesn’t help to scrub your paws with lye soap, or to apply that clear gel hand-sanitizer, Poem-X, with its Kills 99.99% of the rhymes guarantee on the little plastic bottle. It doesn’t help to pack your ear canals with cotton, foam rubber, plumber’s putty, silicone caulking, or even Gorilla Glue, although the latter does work well as a hair extractor and rumor has it that Hal Cannon—after a single G.G. application prior to a Baxter Black performance—can now, without those brush piles sticking outta each side of his noggin, hear a tsetse fly hum the melody to How Dry I Am at 25 paces. Simply put, if you even drive within a hundred miles of Elko or fly over it in any aircraft other than a stealth bomber or the space shuttle, YOU ARE GOING TO CATCH THE POETRY BUG, period, end of discussion, bah-dah-boom, bah-dah-bing. I have permission to share with you the following email (yes, damnit, email!) sent Monday April 2, 2007, two months after the Gathering:

Hi Paul,
      I met you at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. My friend had
      mentioned that I read your poetry in bed to my husband. You had
      asked me to write a little something about how this all happened.
      I apologize for not responding sooner but that inner poet in me
      (never having been tapped!) decided to write our experiences as
      a poem. I started and had a rough draft, then went to an Ina
      Coolbirth Circle poetry reading meeting. The guest speaker
      handed out a sheet with "Unwritten Rules of Poetry." After going
      over the 20 rules, I knew I was a true beginner at writing poetry!
      I did make some changes in my poem and decided not to tear it
      apart, just enjoy the process of writing.

      First, I will tell you in prose our in-bed poetry, then will come the
      poem.

      Having been given your Wolf Tracks On The Welcome Mat and
      Cowboy Poetry, The Reunion, I brought the books to bed one night.
      I asked my husband (Michael is from Garrison, Montana) if he
      would like me to read him a poem. His answer was yes. The next
      night, he said, “Aren’t you going to read another poem?" That is
      all it took. The ritual was started. Each night we either laughed,
      discussed or just thought silently about the poem. Your poems
      usually took on a more lengthy discussion. (That is a good thing!)
      It has been a wonderful, fun time.

      I am sure you could come up with an exceptional poem about
      reading poetry in bed. If you do, I would love to read it. Thank you
      for spending the time talking with me in Elko and for giving us a new
      experience in life.

Poetry in Bed

Settled in my grandfather’s rocking chair,
Words flow from my pen
As thoughts of an evening ritual
Come from that special place in my heart.
Nightly, my husband lies in the warmth of our bed,
Anticipating what will unfold.
I slip between the flannel sheets, grasping our familiar book.
Settled in, with cat planted between us,
The time has come.
Woodworking magazine falls gently to his chest,
Eyes gazing at the ceiling,
Knowing he will be enriched once again with a poem,
Looking at life as a cowboy.
Musing, laughing, pondering, commenting
Or silence.
Gently the words rock us to sleep.

Good night. Sweet dreams.
Kathy Gerdts

Good night. Sweet dreams. Thanks, Kathy, for the nifty segue, because with this swan song blog, I bid you readers farewell. From this Western Folklife site, that is. As I confessed, I DO have a website on which I occasionally post NewsFlashes-‘n’-Fast Dashes—http://www.paulzarzyski.com. Thank you for reading my postings and for tolerating my rants and, I suppose at times, peculiar point-of-views. If you’ve appreciated, on the other hand, any of my musings in this form oh-so-foreign to me, prose, please express your gratitude to Christina Barr and Darcy Minter, who have both sweated, AND DODGED, bullets in orchestrating this cyberspace venue on my behalf. It’s always an artistic adventure to work with the staff of the Western Folklife Center. I apologize to them for shirking my commitment, for the long silence over the past year—less to do with my super-poopiness toward blogging, trust me, than with responsibilities on the old home ground. Accordingly, I’ll close, and say my final adios, with this poem:

How I Tell My Dad I Love Him

Knocking down the standing dead
oak, maple, ash, yellow birch
in July humidity all day long, we
take a blow only to guzzle
spring water from moonshine jugs—
same jugs, same artesian seep, same
father and son who made wood
together one-half century ago, me at six
swinging a hickory double-bit
Dad carved as he whittled
into me the virtue of work, same pride
a blue-collar poet knows
sizing-up the ricks, the short cords of words,
split and fit into stacks
during another hard shift in the woods. Dad
gestures to me his slow-motion
coup de grace—quitting time—
straight razor across the throat
Sicilian sign language with thick Polish finger
just as my chainsaw, racing
out of gas, bucks into two
matching sixteen-inch rounds
the butt-end of a fifty-footer
I was itching to finish. Flocked
with sawdust from my boot laces up
to the crown button of my Paul Bunyan ball cap,
I saunter to the stump
Dad sits on, The Lumberjack Thinker
pondering four score and two years of BTUs. He
does not see me peeling the heavy red
sweat-soaked t-shirt
inside-out up over my torso and face—
popping its collar, like a cork
out of a crock nozzle,
off my forehead. I toss it
splashing into his lap
with reptile heft. He jumps,
cusses me with a laugh, agrees
to replenish my Pabst Blue Ribbon reservoir,
replace my shredded gloves. Our deal
sealed with a handshake, far
less virile lately, tender as a hug,
we drive the same slow miles home—
dripping in the sweetest silence he knows.

CD artwork by Walter Piehl (www.walterpiehl.com)

Postscript Testimonials:

“Nobody does cowboy poetry quite like Paul Zarzyski. With his latest release, ROCK ‘n’ ROWEL, the Polish-Hobo-Rodeo-Poet again brings a contemporary edginess to the traditional genre. Initially, you must listen to keep up as he recites his verse. Later, you’ll want to listen again and again to simply appreciate his mastery of the language and its rhythm.”

Fran Devereux Smith—Western Horseman

“Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’ve watched way too many silver-screen horse operas—from Shane to J.W. Coop to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, from Lonely Are The Brave to Lonesome Dove to Dances With Wolves—but Renata Bratt’s GREAT BIG TATERS lopes me back to my favorite Great Big True-Gritters. Because her verve roams the whole soulful open range of creativity. Because her bow arcs star-to-star, vista-after-big-two-hearted-vista, across musical frontiers. In the keenly enunciated words of The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, imagine if you will Annie Oakley meets Pablo Casals.

The Western Folklife Center is Podcasting "Potatoes" from ROCK 'n' ROWEL. To listen, click here. To purchase ROCK 'n' ROWEL and COLLISIONS OF RECKLESS LOVE, visit the Western Folklife Center Gift Shop.

AS DID Don Edwards when I first cracked the song out a decade ago on the main stage in Elko. My debut brought the house, 800 strong, to their knees with laughter. Foolish Polish-Mafioso-Rodeo-Poet me, I figured it was in response to the top-shelf Will Rogers-esque humor. Poor Don, I worried as I left the stage, how’s he ever going to follow THAT? No problemo. Don saw my 8 ZZillion decibels of raucous audience response and raised me 8 Rock-‘n’-Rowel ZZ’s by saying, I was itchin’ behind stage to step out and accompany Paul’s new song, but at first I thought he was in the key of C and then I realized he had it pretty much surrounded.

Years later Don did accompany me, however—sort of—by putting a melody to my lyric, West Of The Round Corral, and cutting it on his Saddle Songs II album. As I’ve said again and again, I love—I live for—all these connected dots out in the Ol’ Cowpoke Colorin’ Book Cosmos. Thanks, Fran. Thanks, Don. Thanks, Elko. Thanks, Open Path Music Studio—Gordon, Tim, Scott, Lee, who produced ROCK ‘n’ ROWEL. And while I’m at it, thanks, Western Jubilee Recording Company, whose recent Mechanical Royalty Statement included $13.02 for the co-write with Don mentioned above, which covered, by more than a buck, my newsstand bill for WESTERN HORSEMAN and The Fortieth Anniversary issue of ROLLING STONE. Yup, you got it, alright: Rock-‘n’-ROLL, too!

L-R: Andrew Hardin, Sourdough Slim, Don Edwards, Tom Russell and Paul Zarzyski in the green room at the Cowboy Jubilee and Poetry in Carson City, NV

L-R: Andrew Hardin, Paul Zarzyski and Don Edwards with a jug of Reposado 100% Agave Azul in the green room at the Cowboy Jubilee and Poetry in Carson City, NV

Although my original intention was to beam the following solely to this year’s Elko Writing Workshop participants, I’ve decided this morning to blogcast it because A.) I’m a week or two past due with this and, thus, it’s too late to snail-mail it to said participants, and B.) I JUST was informed that email coordinates might NOT be available for said “said participants.” Most of whom probably (unlike the UniPoet) DO computers, and, long as the odds likely are, maybe they’ll catch wind of this pre-workshop preview out there in The Blogosphere. Make sense? GOOD! I knew it purt-near might. In any case, the following 10 pages of palaver should result in one or more of the following responses:

1. “Am I EVER glad I’m signed up for Paul’s workshop!”
2. “Am I EVER glad I’m NOT signed up for Paul’s workshop!”
3. “Self-Interview?!? As in, he’s not only talking to himself, he’s answering himself, to boot? And they’re letting him on the plane??!
4. “I’ll be go-to-hell! I DID NOT KNOW there was a difference between writing poetry and writing rhymes.”
5. “Here’s one Rodeo Poet who got his brainpan pile-drived into the hardpan two too many times!”
6. "I had a hunch The Western Folklife Center was hard up, but…well…this most definitely is The Mother of ALL Hardupednesses.”
7. “Why didn’t they get Billy Collins to teach the workshop?”
8. “I’ve heard Paul's two new CDs and he’s without-a-doubt in violation of The Cowboy Code, if not The Patriot Act!”

(If you ARE in the workshop and if you HAVE miraculously tuned this in, please leave a brief blog-o-comment . Thanks. Paul.)

January 23, 2007
Manchester, MT

Fellow Poets,

After being asked last week to submit preliminary commentary, or a mission statement, or whatever the heck, concerning our workshop, I’ve spent the past five days searching here at the archeological dig, formerly referred to as my writing niche, for the page of palaver I’M CERTAIN I hunted-’n’-pecked prior to the Elko workshop I coached a few years back. Alas, after all my paper shuffling, all my UN-mothballing of files and folders, no cigar for The Polish-Mafioso-Rodeo-Poet-not a single papyrus/cellulose graphite/ink shard of evidence that I ever wrote the booger. Which, of course, I clearly recall as being absolutely stellar. What can I say?: I’m perplexed; I’m disappointed; I’m old. I’m also both lazy and over-burdened right now, and, therefore, rather than starting from scratchski, I’ve decided to regale you with the third “Round” from a SELF-interview, as in who better to pose the most precise questions about how I feel and think and work--about where I’ve already traipsed creative and where I’m hoping to poetically go from here--who better THAN ME!? (or is it I?) Actually, I filched this tactic or technique from my mentor, Richard Hugo--his collection of essays, THE REAL WEST MARGINAL WAY. Dick might’ve borrowed the format from James Dickey. In any case, I’d been itching to engage the concept ever since reading Hugo-to-Hugo exchanges such as the following:

Q. Can you teach creative writing?

A. You damn right I can.

Q. So the classes have value?

A. The best justification for writing classes is not the writing itself, though that’s important, but that people can come together to share fundamental human concerns. What the humanities, literature, art are all about is discussed in other classes. In creative writing classes it operates. We need writing classes the way we once needed churches, because, simplistic as it sounds, that’s where we can reveal our feelings and admit they are important to us…. Whatever that nameless thing is that makes us human, that is the thing that is kept alive in writing courses, some recognition that our lives, no matter how drab, wretched and frustrating they (may) have been, are all we have and in nearly all cases are preferable to death. Simple as this is, it ought never be forgotten, least of all by people who call themselves educated.

I read this passage at least 25 years ago--long before it appeared in Hugo’s essay collection--have kept it front-row-center in that colossal orchestra of cells we call the brain and, as conductor, I point to it with my baton often--whenever I need to remind myself WHY, first and foremost, I write, and WHY I encourage others to do the same.

Just one more Hugoism before I get to Zzarzzyski quizzezz Zzarzzyski, this one from a piece written by Larry Levinger, who I crossed trails with back in ‘74, a fellow workshopee. We’ve stayed in touch and occasionally exchanged our writings with each other for over 30 years, no small feat. The Lev, as I affectionately refer to him, wrote “Poet Richard Hugo: The Open Field Beyond” for a 1992 anthology published by PLOUGHSHARES (Emerson College--Vol. 18, No. 1). The following Hugo passage quoted by Levinger speaks directly and succinctly to our/your mission for the Elko workshop, Jan. 30th and 31st, 2007:

        And there he’d stand, looking like a Pier 39 cargo supervisor, saying: “Now you all know how this kind of thing works. You bring in your poems and read them and during the criticism you don’t talk or defend your work. I’ll be saying a lot about your poem and about poetry and I want you to remember I’m wrong. I’m only right for me. I don’t want you to write like me. Write like somebody else. If you end up good at it, it will be the right somebody else. If you end up very good at it, you’ll write like you.”

Okay. Here it finally is--from 51--5 Rounds with 1 Paul Zarzyski: A Self-Interview (only a handful of folks from this planet have seen this rough-draft writing).

             ROUND 3

Q. It’s high time we talk about your approach to the page, the process, the rendering of the poem.

A. You’ve sure had me fooled--I thought that’s exactly what we’ve been doing the past 8-9 hours?

Q. No, I beg to differ with you. I believe what we’ve been discussing thus far is how your upbringing, your emigration to the cowboy west, and your artistic philosophies have driven, and continue to drive, your poetic passions. Now, with your permission and cooperation, I’d like to “talk shop,” as they say?

A. Fall back and fire away.

Q. Where do they come from?

A. I wish it was as simple as aiming a forefingered-noseconed right arm toward heaven, the way major leaguers do after launching one out of the yard. It ain’t. Because they don’t all come from above. “Where do they come from?” Out of the light, out of the darkness, out of the gloaming, out of the gloom; out of the wide-open, out of the shadows, out of the deep, out of the shallows, out of the magma, out of the past, present, and future I guess; out of the blood--both artery and vein (there I go again)--out of the xylem and phloem, out of the mighty river, out of the meandering brook, out of the trickling spring, out of the purl of anything and everything liquid, out of the mass of all that is solid, out of the vapors of gas, out of the tangible, the invisible, the inconceivable, the impossible, the incomprehensible, the concrete, the abstract, the real and surreal, reasoning and miracle, out of the eye of the hurricane, the heart of darkness, that “somewhere over the rainbow,” out of the land of Oz, out of left field; out of the artificial and natural, organic and synthetic, steel, iron, plastic, glass, bone, skin, branch, bark, cell, atom, molecule, proton, neutron, brain, gut, marrow of the soul, out of the make-up of all time, out of noise out of silence, out of the finite, the infinite, and on and on and eternally on…, but, at its very best, always out of and into THE GLORIOUS COMMOTION OF IT ALL, to echo the title of my spoken-word CD.

Q. As well as to echo your opening poem in WOLF TRACKS ON THE WELCOME MAT--please recite it?

A.             Face-To-Face

Out of nowhere, you find yourself
placed daily before the fortress,
rustic logs throbbing
something from within
you vaguely recognize
as music--so primal,
so otherworldly in its purpose,
you are at once drawn closer,
cautioned back. Succumb
to ugly logic, to mean-spirited
reason, or religion,
and you, believing you shun
merely the unknown, will flee
unwittingly from beauty. Trust the blood,
however, waltzing to four-part harmony
within the heart, and you will be moved
to witness, through the chinking’s
thin fissures, the shadows
of the enchanted. Then, and only then,
might you choose to follow
a force you’ll lovingly call your soul
through huge swinging doors
thrown open to the glorious
commotion of it all.

Q. Well, I guess that purt-near covers it, ‘ey? The whole ball of wax, of yarn, the whole enchilada, the mother of bardic smorgasbords, the pappa of poetic free-for-alls?

A. You’ve been here too long--you’re starting to sound like a lousy copy of me.

(Laughter and long pause.)

Q. Okay. Hell of an answer to “where they come from,” but there’s a secondary or tag-along question, if you will, that begs addressing in the next breath, and that is, “how do you greet or receive them?”

A. That one’s a mite tougher to field. If you’d pose this question to a thousand poets, I suspect you’d get at least 998 diverse responses. For me, therefore, it’s mostly a matter, first-off, of showing up in poetic gear, of being there in poetic mode? My 6-to-8 antennae, after writing for 35 years, are always extended, but in varying degrees of telescopic length. I think most poets would agree that it is not so much a matter of seeking out material or experience or moments or whatever--that it’s the farthest thing from scientific research, from arctic explorations, African safaris, archeological digs. At the opposite extreme end of the spectrum, I’ve never found it very fruitful to effect a disciplined writing schedule, to show up day-in, day-out, and confront the blank page, stare it down like Davy Crockett did “the barr” until the scary hairy booger gives in. Although I do concede that either of the above approaches could very well work wonderfully for some writers--writers far more ambitious than I. My way is simply to leap in, with those 6-to-8 antennas as outstretched and tuned-in as possible, to the daily chaos--not all of it unfortunate chaos, however--of what I refer to as “life’s maintenance.” For me it’s all interwoven, all warp and weft--an intricate birdnest or Persian or Navajo rug, at its best; a casting reel’s tangled backlash, a cosmic cluster-bumfuggle or universal snafu at its worst. I’m talking about a million moments in any given day--how they connect or disconnect and which, if any, call out the loudest whisper (dog-whistle quiet sometimes), rise above the thick cloud of dust roiling above the milling herd, reach out, grab hold of my ear or eye or windpipe, titillate my nape hairs, make my synapses snap and crackle like--to borrow a line from my poem Flamenca Duende--“hot wires flailing wild in a gale.” The thing is, your POETRY WELCOMED or WELCOME POETRY mat better always be out and prominent. Better yet, a fuchsia-’n’-chartreuse cursive neon flashing “Mi Casa Es Su Casa” to Poetry in every window. Add to the above lurings, a marquee above each door sporting in big black block letters those 4 Fs I mentioned earlier: FEARLESSNESS! FREEDOM! FIERCENESS! FUN! (On second thought, maybe a brilliant viper blue would effect far more beckoning strength.) This is what it takes to bring them in, to be ready to receive them graciously, no matter what their needs. Make any sense?

Q. I think so. I’d be a liar to the nth power, however, if I didn’t admit to you that I truly DID expect a more, shall we say, “formulaic” or “tangible” or “concrete” answer?

A. Turn the dials on your A.M.-F.M.-S.M.-M&M bakelite tympanums all to their prospective WORD MUSIC channels, Super-Glue the boogers there for good, and simply let the rhythms and lilts and riffs of the syllables dictate your daily cadences as you move poetically through life. So many musical words and so little time to juxtapose them infinitely?

Q. Okay. That covers the music, but what about the message. Didn’t Hugo say “…in every poem there’s a constant battle going on between the music and the message, and in the very best poems, neither ever wins“?

A. Yes he did--almost verbatim, I believe. But he also suggested that, during the crafting of a poem, the music blazes trail for the message, so to speak. By placing the heaviest concentration on the music, the poet stands the best chance of allowing the poem to say what IT has to say, in opposition to the poet’s encroachment or intrusion. Dick put it clearly for me when he said “Poems are like people--if you listen to them closely enough and long enough, they’ll tell you what it is THEY have to say.” In other words, only a greenhorn tinhorn gunsel amateur would outline a poem or give it a title early-on.

Q. Correct me if I’m wrong on this--you likely know a lot more about training horses than I do, but…

A. I wouldn’t bet on that.

Q. …but isn’t what you’re addressing somewhat akin to what equine maestros…

A. …not great, but I agree with you--“equine maestros” is much better than “horse whisperers”

Q. …what they refer to as “letting the horse think it’s his idea, her choosing?”

A. To be honest, I’m not sure, but it sounds damn good to me right now and, furthermore, reminds me of a poem in ALL THIS WAY FOR THE SHORT RIDE that I dedicated to one of the Cowboy West’s best horsemen, my friend, Randy Rieman. It’s not an easy poem, whatever that means, and I doubt I’ve delivered it from a half-dozen stages. It’s titled The Horseman, The Poet, The Code, The Horse.

Q. I’d love to hear it and, while you’re at it , it seems to me that a lot of what you’ve been emphasizing reflects or ricochets off another cowpoke ars poetica piece from WOLF TRACKS…, Putting The Rodeo Try Into Cowboy Poetry. How about firing both barrels--side-by-side or, more apropos of the page’s framework, over-under?

(Zarzyski reads both poems without bobbling a single syllable, the flawlessness he’d kill for--UniPoet Paladin-For-Hire Hitman website, or NO UniPoet Paladin-For-Hire Hitman website--when delivering his work from the stage.)

The Horseman, The Poet, The Code, The Horse

Sizing up each other’s hearts, and caught
off guard by ripples of their own
reflections, the poet reveres the horseman
as high priest, the horseman beholds
the poet as wizard. In the round pen
with a gentle colt, this trinity of hearts
beats most lovingly because, with love,
nobody becomes the broken. They delight in the flying
lead change of fresh blood, fresh words,
circulating within horse, within horseman and poet,
within this circular cowboy universe
where no two boot heels or hooves--like stars,
like snowflakes or meteorites
or the blacksmith’s hammer striking hot iron--
have ever fallen with the same grace,
gravity, fervor, and force
exactly to the same circle. The two men agree that,
for strangers, they agree much
too eagerly. And then, wide-eyed, again
in harmony, they nod to the synchronized wisdom
of their mentors--Hugo, Dorrance--showing them how
it’s you feeling of the horse, the poem,
and the poem, the horse, feeling of you.
The horseman hands the poet an old bridle--worn
Jeremiah Watt bit and braided reins
he cowboyed with in five states. The poet
hands the horseman a thin book of works
he wrote between rodeos he rode in one-dream
three-bar towns. Seldom has either man known
an adios so slow. In unison they turn
toward the round corral, sudden wind
imitating the sound of wings. Angels--some say
ranahan angels, disguised as fresh western air,
will perch the circle of top rails. Hands still
clasped in their long good-bye,
horseman and poet come full-circle
to this message, to A Blessing, to friendship
lit at the withers between earth and sky.

Putting the Rodeo Try Into Cowboy Poetry

Let’s begin with the wildest landscape, space
inhabited by far more of them
than our own kind and, yes, we are talking
other hearts, other stars. Fall in love with all
that is new born--universe, seedling, dawn,
human, foal, calf. Love equally
the seasons, know each sky has meaning,
winter-out the big lonesomes, the endless
horizons our hopes sink beyond
once every minute, sometimes
seeming never to rise
again for air or light,
for life. Fall madly in love
with earth’s fickle ways. Heed
hard the cosmos cues, the most
minuscule pulsings, subtle nods--no heavy-
handed tap or poke, nothing muscular,
no near-death truths revealed, no telephone
or siren screaming us out of sleep
at 3 a.m. Forget revelation.
Forgive religion. Let’s believe instead in song
birds or Pegasus, the only angels
we’ll ever need. Erase for good
inspiration from our Random Bunk-
House Dictionaries, from our petty heads
and pretty ambitions. Poetry is not
the grace or blessing we pray for--Poetry
is the Goddess for whom
we croon. Sing and surely we shall see
how she loves our music in any key--
any color, any creed, any race, any breed. Rhyme
if the muse or mood moves us
to do so. Go slow. Walk
then trot, lope then rock
and roll for even a split second, our souls
in the thundergust middle, the whole
world suddenly getting western,
pitching a tizzy fit, our horses
come uncorked--just as we were
seriously beginning to think
we savvied the salty? To believe we could
ever turn this stampede,
like steers, into a milling
circle? Into a civil gathering of words?

Q. Being a fan of James Wright, I caught, of course, the title reference to his great horse poem, A Blessing, in the closing lines to The Horseman, The Poet, …. You’ve never presented these 2 works back-to-back?

A. Not until just now, thanks to you. And I agree--that is, indeed, a fine James Wright poem.

Q. In light of the strong duo you read, I can’t help but wonder if there might be a trio or even a quartet I should prod you toward?

A. Probably not. Oh sure, I have others, the Scars Poetica piece I mentioned. Heck, even Words Growing Wild…, I suppose. But the connections are far less western and far more far-fetched. Let’s quit while we’re ahead. Actually, you may already have your trio, if you couple the two I just read with Face-To-Face.

Q. Let’s place Words Growing Wild In The Woods in the number one slot, followed by The Horseman, The Poet…, Putting The Rodeo Try…, and then Face-To-Face. Sounds to me like a stalwart foursome of Fearlessness! Freedom! Fierceness! and Fun! Next question?

A. Shoot.

Q. How ‘bout an example of one of those “close encounters of the umpteenth poetic kind” you’ve alluded to? You’re moseying or gamboling or traipsing or galloping or speeding at warp 10 or whatever through a day rife with “life’s maintenance,” all your dials Super-Glued into musical place, your antennas extended to varying degrees of telescopic penetration out into the ol’ Cowpoke Cosmos, at least one of them, hopefully, tickling the Muse most anatomically intimately, when “out of left field”--bah-dah-boom, bah-dah-bing--you hear the poem stomping the snow off its galoshes right outside your door on the POETRY WELCOMED mat. Now, you “shoot.”

A. I couldn’t have pitched the question better myself--with more metaphorical, eloquent, enticing acumen. It’ll be difficult to respond with in-kind succinctness, but I’ll try.

Q. “Fall back and fire away.”

A. I’m a thrift store junky--especially on the hunt for cowboy-’n’-Indian kitsch from the ‘40s and ‘50s. And the primary focus of my collections, as you can see, is the hand-painted cowpoke cravat--flashy western neckties of yore. But I’m fond, as well, of most any pictorial or, in some cases, abstract air-brushed classic--the more outrageous/gaudy/weird, the better. A decade or so ago, I’m in St. Vincent de Paul’s in Great Falls, back in the days when they stayed open until 9 at night. It’s late. I notice a shopping cart half-filled with shoes, which I immediately identify as that belonging to John Jasmann (pronounced Jazz man), a severely afflicted Down’s Syndrome employee of St. Vinny’s for, at that time, 25 years, most of those years spent orchestrating the used shoe department. Johnny is a country-western music fan--sported headphones as he worked and would oftentimes sing (caterwaul) along. I, too, love the older C-W tunes. John is also a fellow aficionado of neckties--his signature, a different polyester everyday dangling from his shipping cart. But on THIS night, my eye caught, instead of an uninteresting striped or solid, a wide rayon print sporting a keyboard image from its tip to Johnny’s half-hitched rendition of a Windsor knot. I buy the tie, take it home and, instead of hanging it from one of the two dozen racks on the walls you see here in my writing niche, I lay it alongside my beloved Smith-Corona, where it did everything but get up and dance the zoot-suited Lindy before I finally received its cue to write the piece I believe I was destined to write. Fact is, I think I was doing a few rounds on the heavy bag when it hit me, and we ain’t talking nebulous revelation here--I mean, how much more obvious could it have been that the poem would somehow address music? But the real truth-’n’-beauty nucleus of the story evolved via the journey through numerous drafts over a period of months. Walked into St. Vinny’s one day and, as usual, enjoyed my short exchange with John who, I was surprised to note, was sorting shirts and not shoes. Found out that he’d incurred not so much a demotion but more of a lateral move in his employment status, after he suddenly began to display the shoes and boots in haphazard fashion rather than in matched pairs. I’ll bet I struggled through no less than 40-50 reconstructions of the closing stanza to Montana Second Hand before settling for the phrasings, the syntaxes--the rendering--I’m about to recite for you. Paul Valery said “a poem is never finished, only abandoned;” never before had I experienced the truth of his dictum to this extent. It may have had a little to do with an underlying resistance I felt long before I scratched the first word onto the page--probably right from the very moment I unhitched that keyboard tie from John’s cart. Who in the hell did I think I was intruding into a life of which I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the heights of holiness? After reciting the poem for years to cowboy poetry audiences, I met John’s brother, Mark, a horse-’n’-cowman head-to-foot, hat-to-boots. Johnny, it turns out, was born on a cattle ranch in the Madison River Valley near Ennis, Montana. Don’t ask me how, damnit, but I KNEW all along I was writing a cowboy poem.

Montana Second Hand

Down’s syndrome can’t hinder the Saint
Vincent de Paul thrift store
troubadour of the shoe department,
John Jasmann, singing his pedal steel guitar
love songs into his rhapsodical
job--sorting used footwear
into rows from his shopping cart piled
high with each day’s fresh stock. His photo
album propped open
in the child carrier, Polaroids
showcasing him at work--and his touch
of personal panache, one flashy cravat hanging,
half-hitched, from the cart’s push-bar--
he belts out a line of Louisiana Hayride
classic, ...son of a gun
we’ll have big fun on the bayou.
             Hank Williams
lilting hit after hit, John
presses his palms to the Walkman headphones,
as if holding a lover in a long kiss,
and takes wing on the Nashville airwaves
bringing us a little ...how’s about cookin’
somethin’ up with me.
             Strange as this may sound,
John stumbled once onto the key of C,
his usual out-of-tune
cacophony turning
suddenly to a melodic
lovely a cappella: I’m so lo-o-nsome
Iiii could cryyy.
             Listen--as each shopper,
gawking with awe toward Shoes,
pictures some rockabilly god,
some rhythm-’n’-blues aficionado,
maybe Saint Vinny himself,
rolling a ruby-ringed finger
over the solid gold dial
tuned to Angelic Debut.
             May grace taking shape
tangibly in a single line of singing
draw us all one lonesome day
toward the mysterious
display of white shoes
staggered with black boots
across wrought iron racks. There, may each shelf
holding the notes, sharps, flats,
show us how the maestro--excited
by the infinite, cued to the unique
movements we make
arranged together in perfect time--writes
out of all our used lives
one sweet music.

Q. On that poignant musical note, what say we take 10 and hoist a Guinness to The Jazz Man?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And now, from somewhere in Round 5, I offer this coda, this postscript, this closing note until we meet in Elko:

Q. …where to from here?

A. I want to invoke one of my favorite films, CROSSROADS…. You remember the old blues musician, Willy Brown, played by that virtuoso of an actor, Joe Seneca--what an absolutely beautiful face! He’s partnered-up with the young protégé, played by Ralph Macchio of The Karate Kid fame. They bust Willy Brown out of the rest home and make a pilgrimage to a deep south crossroads, where Willy, in his foolish youth, made a pact, a contract, with the Devil and is hoping to void it. I can’t help but interject a couple of marvelous passages that surface in the film--old Willy saying “blues ain’t nothing but a good man feelin’ bad thinking’ about the woman he was once with;” or “Robert Johnson gave us 29 songs and that’s enough.” Anyways, they cross paths again with old Beelzebub, who pitches them a deal. If Willy’s young guitar ace will “cut heads” with the devil’s ace and outduel him, then Lucifer will rip up the contract. Macchio, trained at Julliard, throws the knockout punch with a riff that includes a myriad of classical notes that the devil’s man cannot respond to. The contract is nullified, and Willy and his boy are beamed back to the gravel crossroads. “I hear Chicago callin’,” Willy delights--“you ready for The Windy City?” But then he announces, to the boy’s chagrin, “after Chicago, you on your own.” When Macchio protests and asks “WHY!?”, Willy replies, “cuz you got to take the music someplace else--take it past where you found it. That’s what we did.” That’s what it HAS to be all about--taking the music, taking the poetry, past where I found it.

                The End (purt-near)

            Tradition is not devotion to the ashes but passing on of the fire.

            Karl Kraus
            Austria

(photo by Barbara March)

All politics aside (NOT), I’m pondering, as we speak, the Monterey Festival lineup and taking a mighty delight in the number of women reppin’ for The Cowboy Tribe at this event: Jill Jones (and Lone Star), Yvonne Hollenbeck, Jean Prescott, Denise Withnell, Belinda Gail, Juni Fisher, Doris Daley, Karen Ross…. "Way to go," Mick Vernon and Board. My good friend, Wally McRae would ditto my salute, I’m sure, and then, by way of upholding his Curmudgeondom Throne, would protest…"but too many damn musicians and NEVER enough poets." Whatever your take on the situation, hear once again—at the risk of risking ad nauseam—my adulation, my gratitude, for the committees, the volunteers, who invest time, money, energy, faith-hope-‘n’-charity into the year-long orchestration of such grand festivals. As I told the Monterey reporter who phoned last weekend to document my sensibilities on their 8th annual Gathering, …the real heroes aren’t the performers, they’re the presenters. The Heroic Hierarchy, in The Book According to CZARzyski, goes thus: 1. Organizers; 2. Audience; 3. Performers. Oh, sure, the relationship, at its very best, is symbiotic/synergistic, BUT, in the case of the Cowboy Poetry renaissance, the goose most definitely comes before the golden egg (with apologies for the "fowl" rather than "cow" metaphor here).

The Monterey Festival occurs every December during the National Finals Rodeo. I remember to cheer-on from the stage those cowboys and cowgals competing in Vegas. As I mentioned in a recent bio note, I missed—by merely just a jillion light years—qualifying for the NFR a time or two during my roughstock career back in the ‘80s (1980s, damnit). I go on to say that I consider qualifying for 21 consecutive National Cowboy Poetry Gatherings in Elko (not all that far from Las Vegas, right?) a comparable honor. Never forget my first Elko go-‘round in 1987. Two weeks prior, I’d competed at the Montana Pro-Rodeo Circuit Finals in Great Falls, where I took one of my greatest falls ever off my second, of three, head, after placing on my first draw, Whiskey Talks, a Marvin Brookman NFR bareback horse. A friend helped pull off my ridin’ boots after I made the tooter, but went checkless, the third night on Reg Kesler’s Grubstake. I was 37, had a bum back, and knew it was over. And, you bet, I recall fightin’ back tears as I left that arena for the last time. Then, however, the Ol’ Cowpoke Cosmos dealt me the 3rd ace, turning my two pair dead-man’s-hand to a full boat. "From Missoula, Montana," the Elko Convention Center main stage host for the evening show announced, "Paul Zarzyski." Just like shaking my face for the chutegate, I strode out from behind the curtain and directed that rodeo TRY into spurring the words wild. Everything had changed and nothing had changed, all in the same breath. Once again, the title to my first chapbook of poems rang true—CALL ME LUCKY.

I continued to follow closely the rodeo contestants and NFR perfs throughout the ‘90s—especially pulled for the dynamo bareback rider, AND personality, Deb Greenough. Deb came on strong in the mid-‘80s, so we got to know one another behind the chutes at a number of pitchings. The rude crude truth be known, I donated a saddlebag of entry fees to his annual winnings that got him to his first Finals.

The past few years, however, I’ve begun to lose interest. It’s been purt-near a decade and a half since I deliberately forked a buckin’ horse. That old saw—"distance makes the heart grow fonder"—echoes falsely in this case. Out of habit, I tuned-in a couple nights this week to the NFR broadcasts. Although I shook my face aboard some of the champeen broncs of my era, including Kesler’s Three Bars and Linger’s Strawberry, from where I’m spectating in my living room at age 55 ½, those ponies didn’t pitch with HALF the horsepowered torque of today’s broomtails. Or, likelier, I’ve just crossed over to the pacific side; maybe I’ve finally become the speaker of that marvelous S. Omar Barker poem.

RETIRED BRONC RIDER

These tame ol’ plugs you ride these days (remarks ol’ Baldy Bill),
They maybe buck a little, but they just ain’t got the will
To throw a man or bust a gut a-tryin’, like the kind
We used to ride when I was young. I calloused my behind
On rank ol’ mustang outlaws that was born to buck and pitch
The way that some cowpokes are born to scratch it when they itch.
I used to comb the mane hair of them mustangs with my spurs
Until both wheels was all gobbed up with hair and cockleburs.
Meanwhile I’d roll a cigarette, and with my other hand
I’d wave my hat at all them folks a-cheerin’ in the stand.

I win a heap of ridin’s when the broncs was tough as hell,
But had to quit bronc bustin’ back yonder quite a spell,
Because, although them buckers was the wildest ever born,
My ridin’ broke their spirit till they wasn’t worth their corn.

Yessir, these broncs you youngsters ride (Ol’ Baldy kinder grins)
They ain’t got what it takes to make you sorry for your sins!
Seems like they lack the dynamite them old ‘uns had inside ‘em—
But just the same, I’m glad I’m old—so I don’t have to ride ‘em!

(from S. Omar Barker, Rawhide Rhymes, 1968)

I better pack my warbag of poems for Monterey and batten down the hatches around the place. I’ll be thinking of you as I’m washing down a heaping bowl of cioppino (shellfish stew) with an Anchor Steam brewski and soppin’ up the rich red broth with a crusty sourdough baguette. Out on the wharf. Surrounded by the pacific.

MERRY CHRISTMAS. HAPPY HOLIDAYS. PEACE IN THE NEW YEAR.

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.

After the fire, life--the greenest of greens

“Trout. It’s What’s For Supper,” thanks to Rick

The UniPoet shares his “barley soup” with The Dude, who drinks way more than his share

Nature’s sculpting

5-point bull poet

Zeke’s antler-bone

After a long, but not hard, day on the trail

Moving a rock off the trail

2. So, we were fortunate to find a quartet of elk antlers only because we were willing, and somewhat able, to climb afoot into the steep aspen groves, into country the April-May hordes of horseback horn hunters could not fine-tooth-comb. My partner, Rick, who happens to be one of those who’ll risk the snowdrifts and cold of spring storms in order to pack out hundreds of pounds of sheds, graciously gave me our entire “take,” which I’ve arranged into a mini-sculpture in the living room until the spirit--yes, Matt Hansen’s spirit--moves me to weave them into the antler tree. Zeke, our Aussie dog, sniffs and licks them no less than a dozen times daily--fond memories of HIS big Bob adventure.

3. As is my grand, grand friend and mentor and hero, Wally McRae, I’m a football fan. In no small part because it’s a SPORT (unlike golf, checkers, poker, croquet, bass fishing, etc., which are--according to The Book of CZARzsyki--activities) that punctuates my favorite season of the year, autumn. By the way, do you know the marvelous James Wright poem “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio”? If you too are an aficionado of football/poetry/fall/equine imagery of the highest caliber, check it out in Wright‘s collected poems. While you’re at it, read “The Horse,” “A Blessing,” “Two Horses Playing In The Orchard,” “Gambling In Stateline, Nevada,” and, hell, you might just want to spend a week or so with the entire collection. If you’re an aspiring poet, the work of James Wright can likely teach you far more than you’ll learn in my Elko Workshop, come January. But more on that later, because, as I started to say before I was so fortuitously interrupted, I love a football game on TV as a backdrop to cooking autumn fare, especially on a cold rainy/snowy Sunday afternoon or, better yet, on a Monday night. Nope, I can’t just sit and watch--too much blue-collar blood in my veins; I have to be doing something productive, and cooking fits the bill. But not just any fodder will do. It has to be what I consider autumnal chuck. I’m talkin’ venison or beef stew with no less than 22 components. Or perhaps a creamy polenta with a complex marinara sauce or salamini gravy. Most definitely a medley of, say, yellow zucchini, scallions and/or Walla Walla sweet onions, garlic cloves (make that “heads”), wild mushrooms, bell peppers--green, orange, red, every color they come in. I think “Fall,” I think “color” (remember, I grew up in northern Wisconsin); I think “Fall,” I think “football, regalia, the NBC peacock’s hues--simmering in a cast iron pot!”

4. Pack trip. Wilderness. Wildlife (saw a griz in the middle of the north fork of the Sun River, a pair of wolves, herds of elk, coyotes, mule deer fawns, fool hens, ruffed grouse, waterfowl, toadstool-chomping squirrels, you name it). Two-pound cutthroat trout. Antler sheds, football, Montana autumn, Kodachrome cuisine, top-shelf poetry…it all sounds so romantic, so idyllic. Until, that is, you factor-in that I’m a Green Bay Packer fan (humiliated in their opener, 26-zip, at home last Sunday--on the venerable Lambeau Field). I KNOW what you’re thinking--“serves me right for not pulling for a cowboy team, for the Broncos, the Colts, or for the Cowboys themselves.” Fact is, I spent my entire Wisconsin youth as a Dallas fan, Walt Garrison, not Bart Starr, my idea of a gladiator-to-the-man’s-man-max--running back for the Cowboys 6 months of the year and bulldogger the other half. Thanks to Walt, I learned how to fight my way outta Cheesehead watering holes and, therefore, became a rodeo cowboy, a roughstock rider. Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” had nothin’ on growing up a Cowboys’ fan in the heart of Packerland, I tell you. And then came Brett Favre, from which you should be able to piece together “the rest of the story,” as my fellow Paul, Paul Havre-y would say. To boot, I could make a strong case for the Packers being THEE cowboy poet team: Packers? As in MEAT packing? I’ve BEEN to the tailgate parties at Lambeau--who the hell do you think’s keeping the Beef Industry thriving in this country?! AND the Beer Industry. Beef. Beer. It all makes perfect sense, no?

5. Words. Connections. Drawing that kid-in-the-’50s thick lead pencil line between dots in a Roy Rogers coloring book. We’ll be talking long and hard about ‘er all at the 2007 Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering writing workshop. In the coming months, I’ll likely speak in fine philosophical detail to my participation as coach- ‘n’-cheerleader--you bet, go ahead and picture me sporting green-‘n’-gold mini-skirt, letter sweater, and knee-highs. “My name is Paul--I’ll be your pompom-waver and “GO! POEMS! GO!” rooter-of-words this workshop.” Will those of you joining me learn to become better maestros of the poetic line? Only if you’re willing to do most of the work, while I do the bulk of the shopping. Not merely during the session, but long, long afterwards. I have permission from Susan Parker to share the testimonial with which she honored and humbled me in her letter of June 28, 2006--purt-near 7 months AFTER I cheered-on her poems in a Marriott Motel conference room during last year‘s Monterey Cowboy Poetry & Music Festival:

Howdy, Paul,

Thank you! Thank you! Thank You!

In the 5 hours spent with you in Monterey, I learned more about crafting poetry than I had in the last 6 years in other workshops. For me, the light finally went on. I began to see words on pages from a different perspective, noticing those that looked or sounded interesting. I also began to see the world around me with an “artist’s eye,” finding inspiration for poetry where least expected. In your workshop, I learned to really listen to the sounds of words, to look for the music. I read Richard Hugo’s book, Triggering Town. I studied your line breaks in Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat to attempt to grasp what had been elusive for me--the rationale behind the line breaks. And I finally got it! To let the lines stand alone and make them interesting. I now approach every poem as if it were a jigsaw puzzle, searching for the perfect word-fit. My dictionary and thesaurus are tattered from flipping fingers through their pages.

I just completed an 8-week online workshop put on by Diane Frank, editor of Blue Light Press, as well as a published author and poet. I took a similar workshop from her 2 years ago. While she enjoyed my writing then, this time around she said my writing “has stepped up to a new level of power,” “is very skillful,” “the images are powerful,” and “every line delivers.” She is considering 3 of the 8 poems for an anthology she is publishing. I could not have done this without your workshop.

So, my journey continues; the desire to be as good a writer and poet as possible. I already had the spark, the embers smoldering inside me, but your poetry and the workshop fueled the fire. Thank you for taking the time to share with us all and for the colorful crafting of your poetry that you share with the world.
…

Your friend in poetry,
Sue Parker

6. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! AND Thank You!, too, Susan, for trusting me to engage your words with utmost honesty.

7. Just back from a fourth, over the past 10 months, very intense recording session at Open Path Music studio in San Jose. As I may have mentioned on my personal website, my good friends Gordon Stevens, Tim (fellow paisano) Volpicella, Scott Sorkin and Lee Ray are investing hundreds of hours of time and mountains of talent into creating and producing 2 CDs of finely woven poetry with music. The two choreographies, although they offer a fairly substantial parcel of common ground in format and sensibility, differ considerably in tone and mood. “Collisions Of Reckless Love” offers 14 cuts, most of them solemn/serious, and only 3 or 4 that hard-core cowboy audiences might deem “cowboy.” To be honest, the hardest of that “hard-core” might ruthlessly cut ‘em all from the C.P. herd, as there’s only a single rhymed-‘n’-metered cut, “Black Upon Tan,” a song lyric actually, which does NOT include mention of anything western, aside from “Billings, Montana,” where the story is set. The second CD, ROCK-‘N’-ROWEL, in contrast, lives up to its title, and then some. We’re finished with 90% of the recording. Next the mixing, and then orchestrating the graphics, etc. Hoping to have both discs packaged by late November. I’ll be talking more about this remarkable creative collaboration, this artistic journey with kindred spirits, in future blogs/logs/clogs/frogs or whatever the hell this thing I’m hammering out is called. Isn’t “blog” an ugly word? A sound I might employ in an elegy or dirge, maybe, but definitely not in a joyous verse. GROG! Now THERE’S what these sumbitches ought to be called. Because both Liz and I need stiff drinks after the torment and turmoil we endure trying to transcribe verbatim (DO NOT SCREW WITH THE UNIPOET’S WORDS!!!) my writing to the W.F.C.’s website format. Yup, “grog.”

8. Eight being this rodeo roughie’s favorite number, I’ll close by offering a poem from my 1984 book, long out of print, THE MAKE-UP OF ICE. I doubt many of you know the collection and, thus, may this piece, written in the ‘70s, ring fresh to most of your middle-ear stirrup bones. I experienced “Instant Replay” in 1964, 42 years an one month ago, almost to the day. I trust it will bring this “grog,” metaphorically, full-circle:

Instant Replay

There’s no scrimmage below
this threshold of pain -- the dentist
rushing to keep the hole open
with quick spurts of water, cold
air and steel, penetrating
beyond Novocain’s reach
to the deepest territory of nerve
centers. I’m trapped and double-
teamed on a cross-block sweep,
stampeded by the entire backfield -- fifty,
maybe sixty, single spikes in all,
but just that one bare screw
(the plastic cleat stripped away)
puncturing the lip as a leather
punch pokes a hole in pad strap.

I stumble up, groggy, spitting
practice field sand, bitter
blood and something solid
snatched clean from mid air --
that blind swat on impulse
toward the annoying buzz.
And opening the tight fist
slowly, shadows of fingers
lifting above the palm, I see
this tooth -- surprise of natural pearl --
raw and lustering, long-
rooted in the pulp of my hand.

Imagine the wintry loss of antlers,
those rosettes, tender and flecked red
where pin-prick vessels severed, the raw
pockets in skulls of bull elk
open to the blizzard wind
at night. Imagine these hands
right before your eyes, magician’s
hands, whiter than cuffs
they reach from out of nowhere,
fingers coaxing the tooth
to rejoin with mandible -- the pearl
with oyster -- the constant force
and weight of a thousand hands -- antlers
pressed back in the skull. Imagine growing
stronger, feeling less with more pain,
like lovers or broken bones
together the second time around.

-- for Doc Odorizzi

I’ll remember Matt fondly in the coming days. He was one of my first Montana compadres—a kindred spirit to the core. I post this poem to his memory knowing it will bring Rick and me good karma—poetry as big medicine, so to speak. Just wait until you hear about the fish we caught, the gorgeous country we rode through. In the meantime, this tribute to friendship:

The Antler Tree

Late at night I braid the helix
from floor to ceiling—skeletal
thicket of deciduous horns,
pillar of prongs, of cambers and angles—
as I drink aged whiskey to the spit
of pitchwood embers in Montana, autumn,
the Rockies cross-stitched
in tamarack yellows, bull elk
bugling their shrill stake
to territory, to harem. The trek
comes back distinct as moon-
silhouetted pine boughs, a rack of antlers
on a ridgetop miles off. It begins with a boy,
with a map he unfolds to trace for me
secret trails to his enchanted land, his trove,
the mother lode of abandoned bone.

One by miraculous one, we found them
almost always rocking on the arc
of main beam, crown tines forked
like hazel dowsing rods peeled white—
widespread fingers gleaming
above green billows of grass
beneath aspen, as if beckoning us
from a hundred paces away. It was easy
to imagine them lightning-
chiseled out of jack pine, a wilderness
wind scattering dry limbs
popped clean from sockets. Some so freshly dropped,
it was easy to believe shamans
laid them in our random paths
seconds ahead of us, to believe grace
a sculpted substance—textured, with heft.

Shoulders galled, collarbones aching, feet blistered
after twelve uphill, talused miles,
we unlashed each other from antlered packs
and reveled in the weightlessness that tripped
light-headed leaps over treetops, a floating
those trophy bulls must know
shaking both beams free. I hover often
in that dream, looking down at you
finding a matched set of 6-points
seconds apart—their rosettes, flaxen
full moons over August barley,
their scarred tines like scrimshaw
rubbed to an ivory gloss
against sapling pines. You grappled one
gnarled base in each hand
hoisting them with a 12-year-old’s wild joy.

Each time I build this tree, I learn,
as a blind child with braille
might learn, the unique interlockings
of a magical language. Tines
clack and rattle into place
like lines we recited along trails
to let bears know the poets
were coming for bone. These antlers, Matt,
having grown branch by branch
more potent. Parts of ourselves
we burnish, then abandon
with hope they’ll be gathered
by those who’ll keep them whole,
those who’ll hear the invisible
clash and clatter through lodgepole—your echoes
making the heart of this hunter pound hard.

From WOLF TRACKS ON THE WELCOME MAT – Oreanabooks, 2004

Paul Zarzyski

As we speak--May 22--I’m packing for the 1200 mile drive back to my childhood homeground, Hurley, Wisconsin. I turn 55--double nickels--this Thursday and at the request of my 85 year old Mother and 80 year old Father, we’re celebrating this seemingly numerologically significant moment-in-time together. My folks have lived at 505 Poplar Street since their marriage 59 years ago--Mom was born next door at 507 Poplar. The landscapes--both inner and outer--have changed little since I took Horace Greeley’s advice 33 years ago this summer.

It’s a difficult time to leave our little place here unattended for 8-9 days. Lots of spring chores, even without running cattle, which we do not. So I’ve been frantically trying to scratch entries off the Do-Before-We-Leave list, which I scripted 2 weeks ago and have been adding to ever since. Fixing fence, spraying weeks, shoveling by hand a year’s worth of horse apples out of the corrals, moving old hay around, watering trees, mowing lawn, and, generally-speaking doing the spring cleaning. Which includes, after dark and into the a.m., mucking out my 10-by-10-foot writing niche. It’s a slow process (will likely take the remainder of the year) because--during this archeological dig’s excavations--I find myself (yes, find myself!) stopping to read old letters, manuscripts, publications, you-name-it. Among recent artifacts that have surfaced (yes, again, surfaced) is a bound collection titled HEADWATERS: Montana Writers On Water & Wilderness, published a decade ago in 1996. It offers contributions, testimonies, from 50 writers, including Wallace McRae, Richard Hugo, Annick Smith, who compiled and edited the anthology, James Lee Burke, James Welch, Mary Blew, and --surprise me all to hell--yours truly!

To reiterate and sum up, I’m coming AARP-card-packing 55. AARP, I have decided, stands for Ain’t Able to Remember Poop. As in, I’d forgotten orchestrating for Annick my little poetry-essay--From The West Branch West--printed in HEADWATERS. Moreover, I refuse to deem it mere happenstance that I unearthed it a few days prior to going back to Hurley, where I’ll certainly visit--not fish, but simply visit--the Montreal River, as well as Cominski Crick, where I first wet a line 50-plus years ago with my Dad. As I mentioned, the landscape remains pretty much intact. Finally, I now can cross one more scribble off my Do-Before-We-Leave list--number 13, Western Folklife Center website entry--thanks to being graced once again by a Cowpoke Cosmos prodding, a Musical Universe cue; thanks to the serendipitous linkages between 3 or 4 dots.

FROM THE WEST BRANCH WEST

Either rumor or approximate recall from grade school zoology has it the human body is composed of 80 percent water, give or take 10 percent. At 45 years of age (plus change), fifteen of which I tried hard to fit 8-second rides to rank bareback broncs in the rodeo arena, I’m not feeling quite that fluid these days. In fact, you might say my fast snappy rapids have meandered into a dead eddy. That high-percentage H2o Figure fits me precisely, however, because were it not for streams--rivers and cricks--I wouldn’t have pursued the life’s passions that sustain me and which, I choose to believe, chose me.

A few years ago, I came face-to-hard-analytical-face with a need to trace what seemed an inexplicable poetic lineage/pedigree back to its headwaters. I’d grown up in a bookless home. The language I loved in my formative years was not printed on the page, but spoken from the stage--the stage being the trout streams snaking through thick forests of northern Wisconsin, the actors being my father, his fishing partners and/or the old-timers who I found far more “poetic” than kids my own age. Thus I chose to hang close to their ways and words every chance I could, most always to the brass horn’s roar and chatter, to drum-rumble and cymbal-clash, to the wind section’s susurrus and the strings’ allegretto purl from the river’s orchestra pit.

The Montreal was the only actual river amidst dozens of cricks near my hometown of Hurley. And of its two branches, we fished the West exclusively because raw sewage polluted the East. So it was the West branch of the Montreal where I reveled in the most intimate Father-Son moments of my childhood. In a quest to return to those memories and learn where they, in turn, would take me, I was drawn to write a piece about catching my first trout. I was 4 or 5 years old, directly proportionate to the poor high-bushed fingerling’s length in inches. The poem begins with my dad hoisting me onto his back to carry me through dog-hair alders and swamp into one of his secret stretches of water. “Montreal River,” did not, however, ring truly and fluidly to the stanza, so, remembering Richard Hugo’s mandate that poets don’t owe allegiance to the facts but to the music, I changed the name to “Cominski Crick.”

In any case, I let the story make its run and strip line at will from the reel until I found myself chasing it downstream right to the source of my first love for that music Hugo so often praised as poetry’s soul. In the midst of my mad scramble along the bank, I recalled my constant curiosity, my inquisitiveness: “Dad, what’s this big red and white fly in your hat band, what’s the name of that bird making the funny noise, what kind of tree is this, what do you call those purple flowers….” And he would answer--as only the poem could recollect--employing locutions and alliterations that turned his simple responses into song, a cappella, enthralling my ear always with awe.

Words Growing Wild in the Woods

A boy thrilled with his first horse,
I climbed aboard my father hunkering in hip boots
below the graveled road berm, Cominski Crick
funneling to a rusty culvert. Hooking
an arm behind one of my knees, he lifted
with a grunt and laugh, his creel harness creaking,
splitshot clattering in our bait boxes.

I dreamed a Robin Hood-Paladin-Sinbad life
from those shoulders. His jugular pulse rumbled
into the riffle of my pulse, my thin wrists
against his Adam’s apple--a whiskered knuckle
prickly as cucumbers in our garden
where I picked nightcrawlers, wet and moonlit,
glistening between vines across the black soil.

Eye-level with an array of flies, every crayon
color fastened to the silk band
of his tattered fedora, the hat my mother vowed
a thousand times to burn, I learned to love
the sound of words in the woods--Jock Scott,
Silver Doctor, Mickey Finn, Quill Gordon, Gray
Ghost booming in his voice through the spruce.

At five, my life rhymed with first flights
bursting into birdsong. I loved
the piquant smell of fiddleheads and trilliums,
hickory and maple leaf humus, the petite
bouquets of arbutus we picked for Mom.
I loved the power of my father’s stride
thigh-deep against the surge of dark swirls.

Perched offshore on boulder--safe from wanderlust
but not from currents coiling below--
I prayed to the apostles for a ten-pounder
to test the steel of my telescopic pole,
while Dad, working the water upstream and down,
stayed always in earshot--alert and calling to me
after each beaver splash between us.

I still go home to relearn my first love for words
echoing through those woods: I caught one!
Dad! I caught one! Dad! Dad!
skipping like thin flat stones down the crick--
and him galloping through popples, splitshot ticking,
to find me leaping for a fingerling, my first
brookie twirling from a willow like a jewel.

I met Norman MacLean (forgive me Monsignor for I have sinned--I caught my first brook trout on garden hackle at the end of a bait-casting rig) at a reading he gave in Missoula in the mid-seventies. After waiting my turn in a long autograph line, I was delighted that he made an effort to learn my passions instead of scribbling the generic “best wishes.” Though I don’t recall our exchange, I must have said something to cue him to my precise evolutionary development. He wrote: “For Paul Zarzyski--Poet, Rodeo Rider, Fly Fisherman, in ascending order.”

How could he have known that the “rodeo rider” facet of my make-up would someday serve as the synapse between poetry and river romance?

The Augusta perf at 2, we’d place again
then sneak off to our secret Dearborn River spot.
We’d take some chips and beer and cheese,
skinny-dip, dry off in the breeze,
build a fire, fry the trout we caught.

(From “The Bucking Horse Moon”)

I thank my lucky poetic-cowpoke-piscatorial stars for the West Branch of the Montreal, and for the moments I spent there with my father tuning my tympanum to the lilt of words that would later ignite a craving to write poetry, which in turn would lure me to Montana to study, and become fishing partners, with Dick Hugo, which would draw me, my first spring in Missoula, up Miller Creek to the Oral Zumwalt Rodeo, causing me to catch the bronco-bug and cross trails with fellow Slavic buckin’ hoss twisters and fly fishermen, Kim Zupan and Joe Podgurski, whose friendship encouraged me to spur the passions on all the harder until I’ve come full circle.

…does the river---like a train, like a life--have its own
mysterious roundhouse way of circling back?

(From “A Song Moment for Ian Tyson”)

Because I met my first loves on the banks of a river and ever since have been lured toward music and beauty.

I left home barely
soon enough to make one good
bucking horse ride
across a vast canvas of Russell landscape
backdropped by Heart Butte under a fuchsia sky
in Cascade, Montana.

Through these cottonwoods,
high above the Missouri River’s silent swirls,
the flicking together of leaves
is the applause of small green hands, children
thrilled by a winning ride, by their wildest wish
beginning, as everything begins, with luck
of the draw, with a breeze in the heat,
with whispering hope--a first breath
blessed by myth, or birth, in the West.

(From “Luck of the Draw”)