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My late husband's
family had a long term lease on rangeland in the Crow Indian Reservation. The
reservation was about 50 miles away from the home ranch near Roberts,
Montana. Every Spring, the family would drive their cattle to the rangeland in
the reservation; and in fall, they would drive them back to their ranch. My
husband figured he'd been on at least 30 of these cattle drives. On one such
cattle drive, one of the bulls got loose and rampaged through a farmyard and
tore down a clothesline. I don't suppose the owner of the clothesline thought
that a bull hauling off a clothesline with some of the clothes caught on its
horn was too humorous. My husband, however, got a laugh out of it every time he
thought about it. Here's a poem I wrote for him:
That bull of ol' Tom Clancy
done tore my clothesline down.
It gored my pair a bloomers;
then took off straight fer town.
done tore my clothesline down.
It gored my pair a bloomers;
then took off straight fer town.
It's out there somewheres runnin' 'round...
my bloomers on its horn,
fer all the bloody world t' see-
all muddy, ripped 'n torn.
It headed straight fer town, it did.
My bloomers waved goodbye.
I called yer Uncle Henry out
and thought that I would cry.
My brand new bloomers flyin'
like some riddled battle flag;
a wavin' on that bull's horn
like some old worn out rag.
I didn't think it funny much....
my drawers on some bulls head....
I never will forgive ol' Hank
for what he done and said.
That mangy no-good hound dog.
He thought it quite a joke.
my bloomers waving back at him.
I thought the man'd croak.
He laughed and laughed...
neat split his gut
all the while a blurtin',
"There's no one gonna git into yer bloomers,
that's fer certain."
"Yer humor sucks!", I sez to Hank,
"but this time I agree.
There's NO ONE gonna git into
my bloomers! Wait 'n see! "
Bette Wolf Duncan ©2001
All rights reserved.
Top Female Poet 2011 Academy of Western Artists .
About Bette Wolf Duncan
Born on a Montana ranch, raised near the Red Lodge rodeo country, Bette Duncan was also educated in the state, though since has lived in Dallas, Texas, Los Angeles, California, and Des Moines, Iowa. She presently resides in Runnels, also in Iowa.
A retired attorney, Bette spent the last eight years prior to retirement as an administrative law judge who heard tax cases. She began writing poetry, she states, "...as a diversion and to retain my sanity."
She admits openly, "I am not a cowgirl; but a Montana native never loses their Big Sky heritage." Bette says, "I'm particularly attracted to cowboy poetry because it has rhythm, rhyme, and you know what the poet is talking about (as opposed to modern esoteric free verse)."
I was born during the depression, on my grandfather’s ranch in Stillwater County, Montana. Later my folks moved to Billings, where I went to grade and high school. This is rodeo country; and a good portion of summer entertainment involved rodeo attendance. It is also cattle country; and it was difficult not to grow up a cowpoke of sorts by osmosis.I worked during high school as an usherette in a movie theater. I worked my way through college as a long distance operator; and I graduated from Rocky Mountain College in Billings Montana in 1954. For the next 18 years I worked as a Medical Technologist, chiefly in the field of toxicology. Among other institutions, I worked at Texas Children’s Hospital and Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Los Angeles County Hospital in Los Angeles and Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, California.In 1974, I graduated from Drake University Law School. Subsequently, I was employed as a Prosecutor in The Polk County Attorney’s Office, Des Moines, Iowa; and as Director of the Regulatory Division and legal counsel, Iowa Department of Agriculture. For the last eight years, prior to my retirement in 1995, I was an Administrative Law Judge (tax cases). Since retirement, I have been so busy I wonder how in the world I ever managed before retirement. Besides writing poetry and fooling around on the internet, I am finishing a novel, RAPIST. (It sounds pornographic…it’s not. Actually, much of the background for the book is the Farmer’s Holiday Movement during the Depression.)
WHITMAN'S DACTYLICS
Libraries are marvelous places. The one I go to in Pleasant Hills, Iowa orders any book you ask for if they don't have a copy on hand. I recently picked up three books I ordered: The Life Of Metrical and Free Verse In Twentieth Century Poetry by Jon Silken; The Origins Of Free Verse by H .T. Kirby-Smith; and The Ghost Of Meter" by Annie Finch. Much of the discourse in these books was devoted to various types of rhythm, particularly dactylic and iambic. As you might expect, Emily Dickinson's utilization of iambic pentameter and Walt Whitman's use of dactylics, particularly in "Leaves Of Grass" was thoroughly explored.
After Whitman wrote "Leaves Of Grass," most of the critics of that day called it "a sort of prose poetry." Charles Eliot Norton wrote that it was "a sort of excited prose broken into lines". A. C. Swinburne, in his essay ""Whitmania" said Whitman was as much a poet as was a shoe. I personally think he was a writer that possessed the soul of a poet, but chose to write beautiful prose. He has unforgettable sparks of imagery embedded in dactylic rhythms throughout his prose, for example, "...out of the cradle endlessly rocking." Much of cowboy poetry is written in iambic pentameter,but, unlike the poetry of Emily Dickinson, most of it would be shrugged off as "doggerel" by today's critics.
On two of my four web sites, I have expressed concern regarding advocates of free verse because of their intolerance for any poetry other than free verse or at least poetry that adheres to post-Whitman standards. Frankly, I don't think of free verse as poetry. It is a cross between prose and poetry and should have been advanced as a new art form, "PROSETRY." Some of it has exciting imagery ( but most of it lacks even that.) The objection that can justifiably be made about the advocates of "prosetry" is their rapacious and unending efforts to suppress, demean and stifle all forms of poetry other than their "prosetry." They will listen to no objections that a reader might have regarding "prosetry's" lack of discernable music But on the other side of that coin, many of the writers of cowboy poetry, will not listen to the criticism leveled by "Proseits" about their genre, and some of it is valid. The use of iambic pentameter in lengthy cowboy poems in verse after verse after verse after verse without any variation is a "turn-off." In a long poem of somewhere over 8 or so stanzas it gets monotonous to the point of ruining what otherwise might have been a good poem. The literary world has has long held that variation and slight metrical changes in longer poems, particularly those written in iambic pentameter, are necessary if pleasure is to be given. "The Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Coleridge contains over 100 stanzas of iambic pentameter verse. Coleridge relieved the monotony of so much repetition of the same rhyme scheme by interjecting, here and there, a stanza with 5 lines that varied the usual four line rhyme pattern. For example:
. . . . . .
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Water, water everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
. . . . . . . .
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
I wrote a poem, "Wanted, Dead Or Alive," about ten years back. It had some good stanzas going for it...but my ear told me that it got monotonous and dreary about half the way through. When you silently read a poem, your ears hear it. My ears told me that there was problem...I knew it needed fixing but I lacked the drive or incentive to to do something about it. Some stanzas needed to be scratched entirely and some needed to be rewritten by altering the rhyme scheme in such a way that it helped relieve the tedious monotony of too much unvaried repetition of the same rhythm.. It took me over ten years to do it. This overdue effort transformed the dud into a verse that pleased my ears.As regards the contents of the foregoing library books, my ears liked the sound of Whitman's dactylics "...out of the cradle endlessly rocking," etc. The following poem was the result. Dactylic? I'm not sure...but I like the sound whatever it is. (Moreover, I think it's esoteric enough to satisfy even the most ardent "proseit.")
Blow, breath of Venus! Fan with your blowing...
fan the pale ashes that whisper of death.
Blow, winds from Eden, till once more is growing
the sparks of a grandeur revived by your breath.
Blow out of Eden and fan the pale ashes.
Blow till the carbon leaps higher and higher.
Blow breath of Venus until the pale remnants
are blood-red and pulsing and vibrant with fire.
Fan the pale ashes till once more there's showing
the glimpse of that Eden you've painted for men.
Fan the pale ashes till once more are glowing,
deep in the bosom, those flames once again.© 2007, Bette Wolf Duncan
MORE OF BETTE'S POETRY
5000 Minus One
8 Seconds to Glory
Shaney Ridge
Emma, The Rancher's Bride
The Painter's Hand
Sacrifice Cliff
A Dying Cowboy's Prayer
He'll Make A Cowboy Yet
It Cost Me Mary Lou
Empty-Cradle Sad
The Sweat Belongs t' Me
Mad Dog Mean
Tom & Me
Westward. Ho
My Pretty Patch of Green
Hóka Hey! Hóka Hey!
Flowers for Annie
Big Sky Blue
After the Gathering
The Old Man Was A Cowboy'
Field of Dreams
Makin' Do
Cowboy's Don't Cry
The Red Lodge Rodeo
The Men From Way Out West
Rainbows on the Brain
The Soddy Dun Into A Hill
Rain
Just An Old Horse
Black Sunday
Cowboy Poetry and the Big Pay Off
Heads or Tails
The Lord's Battle
The Red Rider
After the Gatherin'
Goin' for Broke
First Year on the Prairie
The Broken-Hearted House
Goin' for Broke
One Night in the Rodeo Bar
The Blue Ribbon Words
Heading Home
Wyomin's Gone and Done It
Shadow of An Eagle
The Cowboy's Grave
Holidays
Ain't Nothing Quite So Lonely
Christmas Gathering
BOOKS
Dakota
Rodeo Country
The Big Round Up
Russell Country
The Prairie Poet
8 Seconds to Glory
Shaney Ridge
Emma, The Rancher's Bride
The Painter's Hand
Sacrifice Cliff
A Dying Cowboy's Prayer
He'll Make A Cowboy Yet
It Cost Me Mary Lou
Empty-Cradle Sad
The Sweat Belongs t' Me
Mad Dog Mean
Tom & Me
Westward. Ho
My Pretty Patch of Green
Hóka Hey! Hóka Hey!
Flowers for Annie
Big Sky Blue
After the Gathering
The Old Man Was A Cowboy'
Field of Dreams
Makin' Do
Cowboy's Don't Cry
The Red Lodge Rodeo
The Men From Way Out West
Rainbows on the Brain
The Soddy Dun Into A Hill
Rain
Just An Old Horse
Black Sunday
Cowboy Poetry and the Big Pay Off
Heads or Tails
The Lord's Battle
The Red Rider
After the Gatherin'
Goin' for Broke
First Year on the Prairie
The Broken-Hearted House
Goin' for Broke
One Night in the Rodeo Bar
The Blue Ribbon Words
Heading Home
Wyomin's Gone and Done It
Shadow of An Eagle
The Cowboy's Grave
Holidays
Ain't Nothing Quite So Lonely
Christmas Gathering
BOOKS
Dakota
Rodeo Country
The Big Round Up
Russell Country
The Prairie Poet
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