Word: knoxes
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Like the pickup truck and Interstate 40, Knox fails to fit Hollywood's western stereotype: he is a cowboy poet. Despite the apparent oxymoron, verse has its place on the range, and Knox and his fellow horseback balladeers capture well the cowboy's changing world...
Long fences now divide ranches that once ran over unbroken plains. Trailers haul horses from one job to another; those long treks in the saddle, sometimes upwards of 1,200 miles, are a thing of the past. Beef prices have plummeted. Notes Knox: "You sell a cow for $300; you got $600 in her. It's hard to make a living that way." With salaries ranging between $500 and $800 a month, cowboys don't get rich either, a fact that recently prompted Knox to move from solely punching cows to shoeing horses and doing daywork...
After working some 30 jobs in nine Western states in the past 14 years, Knox understands the modern cowboy, and his poetry speaks the plains' truths. As he writes in a poem called The Dying Times: "Any man makin' a living by punchin' cows/ Will know what I mean when I say/ The good times that's been had are comin' to an end;/ Friends, we've about reached that day." His voice is not alone...
...anthology, Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering, by Hal Cannon of the Western Folklife Center in Salt Lake City, turned up about 5,000 poems by contemporary cowboys (known in their slang as waddies) and ranchers. "If you got to talking to most cowboys, they'd admit they write 'em," says Knox. "I think some of the meanest, toughest sons of bitches around write poetry." The first poem Knox penned more than a decade ago describes a barroom brawl he lost, and he's been at it ever since...
Until about 18 months ago, Knox was a nomadic cowpuncher. His rambling philosophy: "There are only two good ranches--the one you've left and the one you're goin' to." Though he's settled with his wife Joni in a corner of Arizona, his cowboy blood still runs thick. With great pride, he pulls his battered steel spurs from the tack-room wall and brushes away the dirt. As he points out the silver-inlaid design and the gold initials R.L.K., he smiles at all the times he's worn them with a swagger. He hangs them...