In 1985, a small mid-winter gathering of cowboy poets in Elko, Nevada spawned the world of cowboy poetry and music gatherings as we know them. The event, now known as the Western Folklife Center’s National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, celebrates its 25th anniversary January 24-31, 2008 (www.westernfolklife.org). More than 50 poets (including 15 who participated in the 1985 gathering) and 24 musicians and music groups will participate in the event, which also includes workshops, panel discussions, lectures, exhibits, films, dances, and more.
Beloved poet Colen Sweeten (1919-2007) was invited to the first gathering, and returned twenty-three times. Early in the event's history, he wrote this poem:
Elko
They came to the mid-winter gath'ring,
Leaving haystacks and dehorning chutes.
Dressed true to old west tradition,
Levis, Stetsons, and high heeled boots.
A few were in casts or on crutches,
Some looked like I'd seen them before.
Each wore the hat no one touches
And had high polished boots on the floor.
The faces were brown as a saddle.
Some mustaches wide as a door.
And they walked with a half cocked straddle,
Like the part that they sit on was sore.
Their poetry, sprinkled with sagebrush,
Was not meant for the city galoots.
And there each one sat in his ten gallon hat,
And a cow and a half worth of boots.
© 1987, Colen Sweeten, All rights reserved
Colen Sweeten’s name will live on at the gathering in a special way. Award-winning South Dakota poet, ranchwife, and champion quilter Yvonne Hollenbeck conceived and created an incomparable work to commemorate the 25th anniversary: a brand quilt. She dedicated many hundreds of hours to the project, which contains 160 blocks with the brands of past participants. Performers and their families supplied their brands, and some created their own quilt blocks. The quilt will be on permanent display at the Western Folklife Center. Yvonne comments, “The quilt was made entirely by hand in the traditional method of quilt making from the pioneer days. I did all of the quilting with a thimble that my great-grandmother Sarah Carr used in her sod house, to make her own quilts.
Patchwork of the Prairie
She called it "patchwork of the prairie"
and I never understood
how one who had so little
could make quilts that looked so good.
She used a lot of tiny scraps
and wasted not one thing;
just tiny pieces of the past
to form a Wedding Ring.
Dresden Plate or Sawtooth Star,
the list went on and on
of quilts she pieced by oil light
'till all her scraps were gone.
She lived there on a homestead
on the South Dakota plain;
it was there in her old soddy
that she stitched away the pain
of hardships only known to those
who came to pave the way
so we could have the kind of life
we all enjoy today.
She said she loved the prairie
and the years of living there;
it was where she raised her family
and her prairie home was where
she made those lovely patchwork quilts
and they will always be
more than “patchwork of the prairie”
'cause they're grandma's legacy.
© 2005, Yvonne Hollenbeck, All rights reserved
Yvonne Hollenbeck’s most recent CD, Pieces of the Past, was named the 2008 Top Cowboy Poetry CD by the Western Music Association. Her 2005 book, From My Window and other poems, received the Academy of Western Artists’ Will Rogers Medallion Award. It includes a section of poems about quilts and quilters. Visit her web site, www.YvonneHollenbeck.com for more about her CDs, books, and quilt show.
Yvonne’s traveling trunk show, “Five Generations of Quilts,” includes her family quilts and stories and poems inspired by her ancestors and other pioneer women of the Plains. It has been offered at many venues, festivals, and cowboy poetry gatherings. Here’s one of her quilt poems:
