Cowboy Twist: Get Along, Little Doggerel

Humor rules at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

After all, where else could you hear a poem about rotting rabbits?

“My husband and I have been married 19 wonderful years . . . and another 35 that weren’t that good,” Elizabeth Ebert quipped Friday as she introduced her comic epic about a season of jackrabbit hunting that resulted, thanks to a particularly warm spring, in a fetid stench--and a retching hubby.

“Was this the hero that I’d tried to win? This sorry, sniveling sissy with the vomit on his chin?” Ebert, a retired rancher from Thunder Hawk, SD., read in one of the many funny poems featured at the festival.

There were sad songs too: stories of prairie funerals, loves left behind and, in the words of local poet and keynote speaker Waddie Mitchell, “weary men who’d wrung a living from this hard and arid land.” And, along with the three days of poetry and music, there were workshops on everything from rawhide braiding to Web design for ranchers.

But for most of the estimated 8,000 visitors to the festival, now in its 17th year, the gathering is a weeklong escape from the difficult life of the working cowboy. The festival, which is organized by the Elko-based Western Folklife Center, was officially designated a national gathering by Congress last fall.

“This has been a dream of mine for 10 years,” said Marty Blocker, a ranch foreman from Cody, Neb., and an amateur poet. He got to make the 18-hour drive--along with his wife, Donna--for his 25th wedding anniversary and even performed in an open poetry session.

“If we had any more fun, we’d be in trouble,” he said.

Their neighbors, Rob and Janet Parkhurst, were able to come along because Rob’s arm is in a sling--making him, in his own words, unable to do much on the family farm, where they have about 1,000 head of cattle.

“We just closed our eyes and we’ll worry about it when we get back,” he said.