The Poetry of Ridin' & Ropin'

The Poetry of Ridin' & Ropin'

Chuck Larsen doesn’t read his poetry, he acts it. The cowboy poet twirls an imaginary rope in his hand, or pushes and grunts as he tells a tale of helping a heifer calve. He bucks and gyrates to the words he weaves, leaving behind folks with tear-streaked cheeks caused from laughing so hard it almost hurts, or from feeling the anguish of a melancholy moment.

“I have it on good authority that the ladies in the front here are ranking cowboy’s behinds,” he said during one performance, twisting around a little to display his own Wrangler-covered derriere. “So how do I score?”

The audience roared, including the five elderly women at the front table.

Mix that nonchalant banter with witty words of the West to get one of the rising performers of cowboy poetry. Born and reared in South Dakota, Larsen, 50, has called Saratoga, Wyo., (pop. 1,726) home for better than a couple of decades. He came to work for Carbon Power & Light, the local rural electric cooperative. Now he’s the manager of the company that provides power for half a dozen small towns and the ranching areas surrounding them. Performances are his second job.

Larsen started performing by reciting the poetry of others, traveling with another Saratoga entertainer, Loren “Teense” Willford. “Sometimes he would recite Annie Laurie and I’d play the song,” says Willford, who plays the guitar and sings.

Then Larsen began using his own poetry—drawn from adventures during horse-packing episodes, with his mule Boomer, or gleaned from the prairies of South Dakota and the mountains circling around the Wyoming valley he calls home. He even uses his wife for inspiration. “A lot of people think I pick on my wife,” he laughs, “but she’s a good source of material and a good sport about it.”

Brenn Hill of Hooper, Utah, calls Chuck Larsen an “infectiously good entertainer.

“I think what cowboy poetry needs is the kind of poetry that Chuck does because it relates so well to everybody, even if they’re outside the bounds of cowboy lifestyle,’’ says Hill, a poet, singer, and songwriter himself.

Like other cowboy poets who attend gatherings (that’s what cowboy poets call performances), Larsen tells stories of the Western lifestyle in each of his poems. Most are silly, but a few are serious, such as Blue Cowboy Moon.

A sense of belongin’ is buried deep,
Out here where lonely coyotes croon.
I only cowboy now when I can,
Every once in a blue moon.

Cowboy poetry was born in the bunkhouse when cowhands sat around during the evening telling stories that just happened to have a certain amount of rhyme and meter to them.

Larsen’s family ran cows and calves on their South Dakota property. “I was always horseback going to Grandma’s for some cookies,” he says. And there he had the chance to spend time with his grandfather, who taught him much about storytelling. “A family gathering back home was not a gathering without stories,” he says.

Years later, Larsen recited some of his poems at a gathering in Cody, Wyo., and “got a little applause. The hook got set real hard.” From there, he started performing more often and in 1996, he released a book of his poems, titled You’re Gonna Get A Kick Outta This! Two albums of his work have followed, Blue Cowboy Moon in 1999 and Stock Tank Reflections in 2002.

These days, Larsen performs solo and folks who hear him know he’s a real entertainer. Because Larsen travels to perform, Willford says, “We’re lucky to get to hear him now.” Yet Larsen shares his poems and stories with local school children “any time I get asked.”

That’s because he wants to pass on his joy of poetry and his love of the Western lifestyle. “The kids learn from my poetry about ranch life and the cowboy life,” he says. “Plus, it’s a lot of fun.”

Candy Moulton is a freelance writer in Encampment, Wyo.

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