Cowboy Poets

What with all the ugly things I’ve said about cowboy poets over the years, together with the even worse things I’ve written about their zany poetical flounderings, I thought I had ’em folded, stapled, and mutilated, boxed in from any further mischief, cadged from inflicting any more pain than they already have on a world that has had to put up with their rhymed nonsense and tortured meters. But they’ve rallied recently and seem more determined than ever to defy decency, manners, and good taste in the mistaken belief they are adding something to a world literature of which they…