Poem of the week: Twenty-Sixth Winter by John Dofflemyer

If you find the term "cowboy poetry" impossibly paradoxical, you might need to think again. Last month, Elko, Nevada, saw the 26th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an annual event that began with a small group of writers, folklorists and musicians, coming together to celebrate and regenerate an increasingly threatened way of life. Among the participants was the author of this week's poem, John Dofflemyer, whose first full-length collection, Poems from Dry Creek was the winner of the 2008 Western Heritage award for outstanding poetry book. John Dofflemyer's poetry draws fruitfully on his life as a cattle-rancher on the southern edge of the Sierra Nevada. In a note to the collection, he describes the setting: "steep ground my family has learned to work with for generations … Our grass is strong feed, our native cattle hearty – the character of the land shapes all."...read more