Western poet rides a wild horse (and recites about it too. . .)

Susan Parker used to think of herself more as a storyteller than as a poet. In fact, for many years, she “never thought I could write.” But when her former husband died from cancer in 1995, a poem plunked itself right down next to her on the sofa as she grieved and she hasn’t stopped poetizing since.

Parker visited mainstream poetry classes and workshops but never felt she quite fit in. “My writing was wordier.” A friend suggested that she go to hear the cowboy poets at the midwinter gathering in Elko, Nevada. A native Californian, she thought “you’ve got to be kidding me” and went to Monterey instead where another cowboy poetry festival took place. Within a short time, she had fallen in love with this unique and enthusiastic poetry community.

By 2004, she had worked up her nerve to perform some of her own work at the Monterey Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival. “I was shaking so badly, the host thought I had a muscle disorder.” Afterwards, she was approached by Margo Metagrano, editor at www.cowboypoetry.com. “Who are you?,” Metegrano asked, and wanted to publish Parker’s work. Parker met other cowboy and rodeo poets at festivals and workshops, including her teachers, Montana’s self-described “rodeo poet” Paul Zarzyski and singer-songwriter Wylie Gustafson. Since then, she has performed alongside Red Steagall, Curly Musgrave, Belinda Gail, and others, and is often featured at western/cowboy poetry and music festivals.

Cowboy poets are generally part of the cattle culture; they are, or have worked as cowboys, ranch hands, and ranchers. Poetry, stories, and songs have traditionally been passed down, around a campfire, in a bunkhouse, or at any place where people gathered: on the trail, at home, or in community get-togethers. As the genre’s popularity grew through the 25-year-old National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, and the work of poets like Baxter Black, Waddie Mitchell, Wallace McRae, Virginia Bennett, Zarzyski, and others, it was welcomed as an alternative to the more academic and sometimes rarified air of most poetry gatherings. (The truth is, many cowboy poets have degrees in literature but they focus less on their erudition than on their desire to articulate the words, sounds, moods, and images evoking the American west and its still vibrant cowboy/ranch culture.)

“Cowboy poetry is about connecting with the audience rather than being focused on doing ‘readings.’ Cowboy poets strive to retain the oral tradition in preserving an important part of America’s heritage. As Parker describes it, cowboy poetry is quintessentially performance-based and explores subjects the writers know and care deeply about; they write about the lives they lead. Like most trades and professions--fishermen, oil workers, police officers, and doctors--western ranch culture has its own lingo.

Often, cowboy poetry follows more traditional rhythms and forms, using regular metric patterns including the Anglo-Celtic hymnal and ballad form of four-line quatrains and a chorus. Some poets have expanded into free verse but the poems usually emphasize narrative over experimentation while respecting the emotional aspects of the human struggle to survive while living in harsh circumstances or alone in a beautiful yet unforgiving landscape or surrounded by animals (and their predators).

The work is presented from memory with poets dressed in working-ranch attire or their Sunday best. Many women have risen to the top of this genre and they are frequently ranch managers (don’t call them ranch wives!) like Georgie Sicking, who has owned her own ranch; horse trainer and ranch hand Virginia Bennett; and, Linda Kirkpatrick, who grew up on a ranch and has managed a cow/calf operation.

Although she wasn’t born to the cowboy lifestyle herself, Parker says she was “born with a cowboy soul.” From an early age she loved horses, cowboys, rodeos, and all things Western. She used to sneak rides on a neighbor’s horse when she was a girl and, finally at age 40, she bought a gray Arabian gelding.  She has been riding and volunteering at the Wild Horse Sanctuary in Shingletown, California, near Red Bluff since the mid-1980s where she gathers inspiration for her western poetry. Her pioneer grandparents were Gallagher’s from Ireland, and her granddad worked on the railroad, as many Irish did. Her maternal great-grandparents were emigrants from Norway to North Dakota, when that land was still relatively wild, unfenced, and knew few white settlers. “I have great respect for the keepers of the land,” she says.

Parker’s main project has been the excavation and performance of poems by pioneer women like Rhoda Sivell who adventured all the way from Dublin, Ireland, to Alberta, Canada, in the late 1800s. There were many  “women in the wagon” who accompanied husbands, not necessarily because they wanted to, who wrote of their isolation, loneliness, and awe of the land. Some traveled  west alone in search of adventure or what they hoped would be a better life. When Parker visits a used bookstore, she migrates to the oldest volumes on the shelf and has occasionally found the odd volume containing the work of these women.

“Little of their poetry is humorous,” Parker says, “the way some cowboy poetry can be.” Parker scans the poems for length, for imagery that relates to the west (nature, horses, the western landscape and horizon, and the women’s daily lives). “I try to see if the words jump out and evoke emotion.” Citing the “The Deserted Homestead,” an 1869 poem by Marguerite St. Leon Loud, Parker says “A lot of the material still stands today.“

Parker's “Vanishing Voices” project is being culled with patience and respect as she makes selections and commits poems to memory. She will turn them into performance pieces and a compact disk to showcase the neglected and forgotten poems and tales of female pioneers and ranchers. “I hear their voices as they pour out their loneliness and frustration, their courage and determination.” It seems a fitting project for a woman who has experienced her share of loss in recent months.

Parker lost her aunt not long ago, and in April, her husband Cort Parker, an engineer, real estate broker, and writer, passed away. For the past few years, the pair had traveled and enjoyed the cowboy poetry scene together, so as she met with hospice workers and fellow western poetry lovers, the idea evolved to do a benefit for the American Cancer Society in her hometown of Benicia. Denise Keary organized the event that featured a silent auction before and after the poetry performances of Parker, Zarzyski (photo, left), and Mick Vernon, author of “The Lyrical Lawman Rides,” a former part-time farrier, Big Sur trailride guide and 25-year law enforcement veteran. All proceeds benefited the ACS.

Susan Parker has published Lady by the Bay, a collection of poetry ($12) and recorded a CD, “She Rode a Wild Horse,” released in 2007 ($18), which includes both Parker‘s own work and poems by S. Omar Barker, Virginia Bennett, Elizabeth Ebert, Henry Herbert Knibbs and others. Both are directly available by writing to her at P.O. Box 865, Benicia, CA 94510. She has several gigs scheduled in coming months which are posted at http://www.susanparkerpoet.com, including the July 24 benefit.

For more information about cowboy poetry, visit www.cowboypoetry.com with its continual updates, news and event calendars, and contemporary cowboy poems. It is a project of the non-profit Center for Western Cowboy Poetry. Other websites of interest: www.cowboypoetry.com; www.workingcowboy.com. You can also write to: Cowboy Poetry.Com, P.O. Box 33044, San Francisco, CA 94133

Excerpt from “Cowboy Kinda Girl” by Susan Parker

I like a man in Wranglers ‘n boots.
They’re not for me those Armani suits
in high-polished wing tips or loafers with tassels,
‘n rings on their pinkies, who live in glass castles.

I wanna guy who’s rugged ‘n tall,
speaks words of love with a Tennessee drawl,
swaggers beside me with a bowlegged stride,
yet has no fear of his feminine side.

I need a man who’s toughened with muscle,
sports at his navel a PRCA buckle,
a rodeo champ who rides a bare-back bronc,
then dances the two-step at the honky-tonk.

He smells of old leather ‘n fresh mown hay,
rides a fine pony, a Quarter horse bay.
Together they work to bring home the herd;
that jobs gets done with nary a word.