Virginia Bennett

Cowgirl Poetry edited by Virginia Bennett is a collection of poems that are written for those of us who remember gazing at the small screen and seeing ourselves as the wife, beside our husband Roy, singing “Happy Trails to You’. Written by an assortment of women who truly lived a cowgirls’ life in the American west.

These are poems of jingling reins, cowboy courting’, living free and thunder on the western plains. Mixing both vintage poetry from the early years of the 20th Century with poems that were written during the last decade of the 1900‘s, this is a varied collection, in many different styles yet they all have in common that authentic ring of the true cowgirl.

Don’t bring me roses till I die,
She told him all her life.
I’m more a lilac kind of girl,
A daisy kind of wife.
- Roses for a Cowgirl by Jo Maseberg
Macksville, Kansas

Simple lyrics, direct in nature, this anthology of women’s writings allows us to see the beauty, the excitement, and the hardships of a cowgirl‘s life, be they wives, mothers or daughters.


Out here in the West, where settlers dwelt
On plains as vast as a sea,
Lie the bones of children, buried in sod
In graves you’ll never see.
- Lilac Time by Gwen Peterson
Big Timber, Montana… (plus d'informations)

A wonderful collection of contemporary cowboy poetry from a working ranch hand and horse trainer. Reading these straightforward rhymed verses (which I can hear declaimed in a rural Western US accent as I read them) that capture dramatic vignettes, hard but fulfilling work, humorous stories, spiritual insights, and laments for a vanishing way of life, I can really feel myself in the landscape, among the horses.

Author bio from target="_top">http://www.cowboypoetry.com/vibennett.htm:

Virginia Bennett has been performing cowboy poetry since 1988. Regularly featured at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, Virginia has also shared her work at the Smithsonian Institute, and has been featured many times on PBS and NPR specials. She has been working on Western ranches since 1971, alongside her ranch manager husband, Pete. She started colts for the public for 20 years, has shown hunter/jumpers, driven draft teams for a living, and drawn cowboy wages on big outfits. She continues to write for many publications as well as reciting original, traditional verse.… (plus d'informations)