Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Cowboy Poetry bites the dust.


Today’s the day LLWRC 831 / Introduction to Cowboy Poetry was to begin at the University of Utah. Unfortunately, the class is DOA owing to lack of sufficient enrollment.
Somehow, courses like African Drumming, Cheesemaking 101, Succulent Centerpieces, Qigong, and Growing Medicinal Mushrooms work.
But not Cowboy Poetry.
The U wants to try again, and has scheduled the class for Summer Semester, to run six weeks in May and June. If that session doesn’t attract sufficient interest, it is unlikely the University of Utah will ever take Cowboy Poetry seriously again.
I’m beginning to wonder myself.


6 comments:

  1. Rod, Sorry to hear that. Maybe advertise Cowboy Poetry as an alternative lifestyle?

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  2. I wish that more people realized that cowboy poetry is not just a collection of words with rhyme and meter. Cowboy poetry is the story of us and what it took to live in the late 1800's in the place where everyone chose to go, the west! Those of us who write it today follow in the footsteps of those who collected and kept their stories in rhyme and meter beginning and preserving a genre that we have today. It is more than just poetry, it is history and storytelling all rolled into one. So many youngsters have the wrong idea about cowboys, their idea is the silver screen and that is just not what cowboy poetry is at all. Carry on Rod!!!

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  3. Sorry I couldn't sign up. I have lots of travel with my job in the next two months and would not have been able to attend all the workshops. I certainly understand, I used to teach a Life Long Learning class as well, and it was always very close on the attendance as to whether it was a go or not. I feel we have lost a chance a great opportunity. Say I looked for you at Cache Valley, couldn't find you. Were you there with another project? I really wanted to meet you. One of these days I hope. Anita Crane

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    1. Thanks, Anita. Sorry we missed each other at the Cache Valley Cowboy Rendezvous. After judging the poetry contests in the morning I spent most of the day at my book table near the auditorium, with a welcome break to take a few pictures at the Mary Kaye concert in the afternoon for a magazine article.

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