Ask a Cowboy Poet: The Time It Takes
Got a Question? Ask A COWBOY POET!
July 2026
Sometimes writing a cowboy poem comes “like it was delivered via a magic carpet,” but other times the writing drags on and on for months or years. This month, the cowboy poets talk about the time it takes them to write poems as they answer this question—
What was the quickest poem you ever wrote? Which one took the longest, and how long did it take to finish?
~ The Deadline Drifter
Annie Mackenzie:
One of the quickest poems I've ever written was “Mr. Perfect.” I wrote it on the drive back from moving cows in about five minutes and recited it over the CB radio to the rest of the crew directly after finishing it.
The poem that took the longest is probably “Woah Baxter.” I started writing it the day that it happened, but I never could quite finish it. It was probably three years after I started it that I was able to come back to it—after setting it aside multiple times—and finally finish the dang thing. It was then a couple more years before I took on the task of memorizing it so that I could perform it at gatherings.
Dick Gibford:
Most of my poems come pretty fast to me. When conditions are about right, they somehow show up in my ol’ brain pan like they blew in as a long cool breeze off the Nevada desert just ahead of the first storm in the fall. Yet now that I am getting long in the tooth and my bridle teeth are about to go south, the poems don't come as easily as they once did. A year ago, I got commissioned to write a poem for some documentary filmmakers, and that was probably the most difficult and slowest one I ever wrote. They finally liked it after I wrote it over three times. It was hard to keep the inspiration flowing on that one.
I guess the best and fastest poem of one that is lengthy would be my old favorite called “Lone Cowboy.” It came like it was delivered via a magic carpet and I wrote it down line for line about as fast as I could write and never had to change a word. That was in 1987, and I doubt I will ever write another equal to it. So this is a great question, very thought provoking, and I thank you very much for coming up with it, whoever you are out there in the mysterious cowboy poets questionarial—a place perhaps where the skies are not cloudy all day.
Doris Daley:
I do not know what it's like to quickly write a poem. I only know how to stare at the page, look out the window, wipe away the drops of blood appearing on my forehead, then write a line, then cross it out. Repeat. I just re-read that sentence. The process sounds awful. Please tell me why I do this!
DW Groethe:
I've had a few poems over the years that I wrote out rather quickly, but the piece I think of as the number one most complete when I sat down to write it is "My Father's Horses." There was no hesitation at all. It slipped from my pen like I was copying it down from a book. I may have changed a verb tense or two, but that would have been it.
As for the one that took the longest, there's several that dragged along forever. "The Night Ol' Flukie Foundered" had a couple verses that I waited a few months to materialize. Most poems, for me anyway, go through three stages of writing. The first draft, easily the roughest, then after a few days of contemplation the second draft tightens up the poem. Sometimes that's all it needs, but there are those poems that are 95% finished and they just don't feel right even though they read fine. After awhile, months even, if i can't figure it out I send them out into the world anyway. That's just the way it goes.
Ta daa,
d dub
