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P. Smh performs at the 2016 Natnal Cowboy Poetry Gatherg Elko Nevada." class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn AssetEmbedCaptn-fNQBPI fmQnYP asset-embed__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptn__text">R. P. Smh performs at the 2016 Natnal Cowboy Poetry Gatherg, Elko, Nevada.</span></div></figure></div><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg">Whout a P.A. system, was difficult to hear anythg while stg behd the podium, and so, as the wboy poet R. P. Smh waed for his turn at the mike, arms akimbo and boots on the ground, he thought about the keynote addrs he’d endured the prev morng. The environmental historian Dan Flor had spoken about the market forc that drove whe settlers to oblerate the bison and other big grazers the Great Plas, the opulent safaris that rced thunrg herds to sun-bleached bon, and about the importance of rekdlg that “Amerin Serengeti” of old. Smh would have liked to argue a few pots wh the man, but he knew that the lexin of the ranch didn’t always fare well agast footnot and Ph.D.s. He uldn’t que articulate , even to himself, but he believed there was somethg to be said for the dtry that supplanted the herds of buffalo and pronghorn, somethg to be said for the here and now.</p><p class="paywall">He was thkg of the bon he knew bt when the host lled his name and waved him forward. Smh is short and th and mov quickly, directly, as if htg visible stage marks. His jeans were tight and stiff as rdboard; his boots were scuffed and his belt buckle shone, wh the floodlight throwg a crisp shadow on the Wtern mural behd him. The room was at pacy, roughly two hundred people, wh every seat filled and overflow skirtg the walls for the 11:30 <em class="small">A.M.</em> show at the Natnal Cowboy Poetry Gatherg, Elko, Nevada.</p><p class="paywall">“The keynote speaker yterday was talkg about the fossil trail. I’ve got some trag that way,” Smh said. “Of urse they were all my ttle.” Unsg, he psed jt long enough to let people tch on. “I’ve got a seri of really short poems that I want to n by you,” he ntued. “They are all set the tradn of Greek theatre. No matter how beat up the characters Greek theatre got, if they were still alive at the end, was a edy. The are tragedi. The first one is lled ‘Bone Pile Near the Creek.’ ”</p><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p>Learn a lson now om this poor old w</p><p>Whose bon are sttered here</p><p>You stretched your luck when you shorted my chuck</p><p>then kept me one more year.</p></div></blockquote><p class="paywall">He reced two more before returng to his seat, one lled “Skull on the Post,” the other “Pelvic Bone the Canyon,” each of them elicg lghs and applse om a crowd ls terted iambs and troche than a sense of place and a story they uld relate to. Later on, when the lights had dimmed, Smh would wonr jt what tak to earn a higher billg here at the Gatherg, an event he’d been performg at for years. What uld he have done better? But he wouldn’t dwell on for long; back Nebraska, he had a ranch to attend to, a fay, two hundred head of ttle. He had never tend to be a poet, anyway. “It jt sort of got away om me,” he said.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">R. P. Smh, “Nebraska’s Homegrown Humorist and Cowboy Poet,” is my first once removed. As a kid, I lled him my uncle, but our fai never seemed to have much mon. While my siblgs and I went to the public school town, R. P. and his wife, Beth, sent their six children to a untry school closer to their ranch. We saw them mostly on holidays and at fay rnns.</p><p class="paywall">“When people hear we have six kids, they jump to the ncln this is due to relig affiliatn or a particular branch of ,” R. P. often says, onstage and off. “I try to expla ourselv by tell’ folks that we are ranchers, and we tend to be fairly productn oriented, and we don’t have a great ncept of supply and mand.” For a while, R. P. and his wife drove their kids around a ed limo—a purely pragmatic choice—and I remember them filg out of the back seat to our driveway on Christmas Eve, boots and hats and pearl-snap shirts tucked to Wrangler jeans. My dad was the lol optometrist. I n only image how we looked om their pot of view—hair spiked, wh baggy jeans and Hot Topic T-shirts. Surely we seemed as exotic to them as they sometim did to , not least when R. P. started rhymg.</p><p class="paywall">After he began makg a name for himself, my high school would sometim book R. P. for special events. Though we were never so cel as to sff at his poetry public, my brothers and I did joke among ourselv about what seemed to an pecially hillbilly ctom. We didn’t get , and we certaly didn’t try to. But, lately, I’ve grown cur. When I saw onle that R. P. had been ved to the thirty-send Natnal Cowboy Poetry Gatherg, January, I cid to go. Maybe there was more to the genre than my brothers and I had given cred for. And what the hell is wboy poetry, anyway?</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In the early neteen-eighti, a group of wtern folklorists, armed wh a small grant om the Natnal Endowment for the Arts, set out to prerve Ameri’s wboy culture. They vised workg ranch all over the Wt, fearg that the old tradns were quickly disappearg the age of the urban wboy. “There was such a disnnect between what they were sayg and what was g out of Nashville and Hollywood wh a wboy hat on,” Hal Cannon, the foundg director of the Natnal Cowboy Poetry Gatherg and s host anizatn, the Wtern Folklife Center, told me. At the same time, ral populatn ntued to late, and young men and women, even out Wt, no longer ped for agricultural work. But the procs of terviewg the wboys, Cannon said, “we also found the highly articulate people who were poets, or who reced the old poems, and we jt said, ‘What is this about?’ ”</p><p class="paywall">Cowboy poetry was spawned on the trail driv north om Texas after the Civil War, as whands killed time around the mpfire, tellg stori to the rhythm of tradnal ballads and the popular poetry of the time: Byron, Tennyson, Longfellow. Today, is evintly impossible to attend the Gatherg whout hearg the classic Robert Service poem “<a href=">The Crematn of Sam McGee</a>” at least three tim. “Did wboy poets read Edgar Allan Poe? Sure,” the folklorist David Stanley, a former staff member of the Gatherg, wr his say “<a data-offer-url=" class="external-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">On the Trail of Cowboy Poetry</a>.” “How about Walt Whman? Maybe. T. S. Elt? Ezra Pound? Probably not—but they voured (and digted) the poets who had powerful rhythms and exactg rhym and who wrote about outdoor life, human bravery and endurance, and pannship.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In 1985, after a most mpaign to intify Ameri’s wboy poets, Cannon and several others tablished the gural Cowboy Poetry Gatherg. Heedg the ncerns of their several dozen weary participants, the founrs avoid major ci and flashy rort towns and stead chose Elko, a town of about ten thoand people, at the time, and wh a century’s worth of wboy culture. Among the first group of wboy poets to attend the Gatherg was a Montana rancher named Wallace McRae. If you have heard one wboy poem, is likely McRae’s “<a href=">Rernatn</a>,” which R. P. Smh par to “Genis, the Bible.” It begs:</p><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p>"What do Rernatn mean?"</p><p>A wpoke asked his iend.</p><p>His pal replied, "It happens when</p><p>Yer life has reached s end.</p><p>They b yer hair, and warsh yer neck,</p><p>And clean yer fgernails,</p><p>And lay you a padd box</p><p>Away om life's travails."</p></div></blockquote><p class="paywall">Dcribg that first Gatherg, McRae, now a headlg act, noted that the wboys who attend realized that they had all wrten the same poem about their favore horse. In other words, they’d found their muny. “It was like a rk was popped off a bottle of really old, really good champagne,” Cannon said. “They thought they were the only on out there who did .” And when they did, “ was around a kchen table, was at the bunkhoe. In ont of a crowd, they were nervo, their kne were knockg, they weren’t performers, but there was <em>valy</em>.”</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">In October, 2000, the Uned Stat Senate passed Rolutn 326, officially signatg the Elko event as the Natnal Cowboy Poetry Gatherg. The rolutn refers to wboy poetry as “a central form of artistry muni throughout the Wt,” and scrib the Gatherg as “a bridge between urban and ral people” and “a fom for the prentatn of art and for the discsn of cultural issu a humane and non-polil manner.” Origally tend as a one-off weekend performance, the Gatherg is now a weeklong event that gross more than half a ln dollars, wh more than fifty performers and a hundred and fifty performanc and other events. The Wtern Folklife Center sold more than ten thoand tickets this year.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The wboy poets I spoke to seemed well aware of how outsirs might view their genre, a workg knowledge of the term “doggerel” beg a necsary tool the effort to refute the charge. And some of  <em>is</em> doggerel, they adm. A lot of , even. Some of the poets at the Gatherg have lived a wboy life, McRae said, but don’t have the tools to translate . Some have the lerary chops but lack the real-life experience. “But at least if ’s a loy wboy poem you have an ia what ’s about,” he said. “Some of this morn stuff seems to me an exercise obscury. It don’t take a geni to unrstand and appreciate what is we’re talkg about.”</p><p class="paywall">Which is not to say they are entirely disengaged wh morn poetry. McRae c the former U.S. Poet Lreate Donald Hall as one of his favor. Pl Zarzyski, one of the few ee-verse wboy poets at the Gatherg, pleted an M.F.A. at the Universy of Montana, unr the poet Richard Hugo. Durg Thursday’s prime-time event, tled “99% Free Range Poetry,” the Canadian wboy poet Doris Daley weled the dience by quotg Leonard Cohen and Kenh Rexroth, who has been lled the father of the Beats. Ne wboys filled the stage, each takg turns recg poems that had fluenced their own work. One of them reced Billy Colls, another reced Robert Bly. In 1995, the Wtern Folklife Center ved the Rsian poet Yevgeny Yevthenko to the Gatherg. “We were havg lunch and he said, ‘I love your amic poets. They’re my bt iends. But is so, so … <em>prec</em>,’ ” Cannon relled, adoptg a Rsian accent. “ ‘But here is jt so val! I am a Siberian wboy!’ ”</p><p class="paywall">You won’t fd many wboy poets your favore lerary journal—for starters, they rarely subm. Their books tend to be self-published or released through ty, niche publishers for the sake of events like the Gatherg. I spent an hour surveyg their wrten work at the Gatherg’s gift shop, and, tth, a small circulatn is probably for the bt. Cowboy poetry is a performance art. The heart and soul that the bt of the poets radiate before an dience rarely transfer well to the page. McRae’s voice is ep and rough, his rhythm slow yet somehow surprisg. R. P. is the oppose, ually, liverg his l gallopg succsn, enunciatg every word, limbs stampedg, phg his dience right up to the edge before htg the climax and slowg to a trot.</p><p class="paywall">On the page, all of this is lost. Both McRae and R. P. have books; neher one has immediate plans to publish aga. They don’t sell anyway, McRae said. “I thk wboy poetry is tryg to dispel the feelg Owen Wister gave ‘The Virgian,’ where we’re all semi-stupid and the only thg we n fd to say is ‘yep’ and ‘nope’ and ‘y, ma’am,’ ” he told me. “If you’re recg, pecially if you’ve got the lights on and a microphone and an dience ont of you, requir you to step away om the ‘Virgian’ image and bee a performer.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">I spent three days trailg my first once removed at the Gatherg, snakg my way through handlebar mtach and hearty handshak. When R. P. wasn’t onstage, I attend recals by McRae and Daley, Zarzyski and Elizabeth Ebert, Waddie Mchell and Vs Qulan and Slim McNght. (Some of the most popular wboy poets are women; Ebert, nety-one, om Thunr Hawk, South Dakota, is R. P.’s favore poet.) In some ways, was what I expected: a crowd of primarily olr whe men and their wiv, drsed their wtern Sunday bt, talkg weather and ttle and market pric. Henry Real Bird, a fan favore, who grew up on the Crow Indian Rervatn, Montana, was the only Native Amerin poet at this year’s event, though several Native Amerin and First Natns micians performed.</p><p class="paywall">At the end of my first day, I sneaked late to a show lled “Life of the Cowboy.” Four men sat behd the podium, one of them a h-faced poet and bullfighter om Donahue, Iowa, named Dean Marten. The recipient of a scholarship for young poets, he had stepped on a plane for the first time his life to be there. His first poem was curt and funny, a h wh the dience, who likely didn’t e to see him. But durg his send act Marten stumbled on a le, and then he stumbled aga, and then he oze. Several hundred people stared back at him om their seats, wag for him to start aga. He stared at his boots. He squted the lights. He lowered the microphone and shook his head, the room seemg much bigger than had jt moments before.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">When the silence grew too heavy, I lay down my mera and snned the crowd. Everyone was sg, exced for the next le, whenever returned to him. Nobody wced or retreated to a smartphone. Later the week, R. P. said, “I n’t tell you how many tim I’ve msed one up and people have said, ‘Man, that was the bt thg you did, bee we know you’re human. We know you don’t jt have some puter there clickg away.’ ” Eventually, Waddie Mchell, a wboy who has been performg here sce the begng, waved his hand and said kdly, “Jt start aga.” It worked. Marten cised through his send attempt whout a hiccup, garnerg extra applse for the effort.</p><p class="paywall">“People ask where the Wt begs. I say the Wt is everywhere,” Gail Steiger, a mician and filmmaker who has been attendg the Gatherg sce 1988, told me. “You n ll wboy poetry. You n put a wboy hat on . You n put a sombrero on . You n put a beret on ,” he said. But, for him, a ncern for the Wt and s history is “what is at the root of this dialogue. It’s the awarens of a changg way of life om both sis. It’s the ncern about s loss, om the people who are livg , and ’s the people who have already moved beyond . They’re missg somethg where they are, and they’re thkg, ‘Wa a mute. 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data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href="/books/page-turner/a-radil-poet--the-age-of-google-and-guantanamo" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">A Radil Poet the Age of Google and Guantánamo</div></a><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Nilas Niarchos</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hlYhBH summary-em summary-em--article summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm eamwqR" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/books/page-turner/the-bizarre-trial-of-a-poet--myanmar" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="The Bizarre Trial of a Poet Myanmar" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl ldWYvC summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Page-Turner</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM cZPaWG summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href="/books/page-turner/the-bizarre-trial-of-a-poet--myanmar" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">The Bizarre Trial of a Poet Myanmar</div></a><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Joe Freeman</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hlYhBH summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center 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target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="The Civil-Rights Showdown Nobody Remembers" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd jxOIpm cPtisA summary-em__k">Clton High was the first Southern school to be tegrated by urt orr. Why did reluctant acceptance turn to vlence?</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Louis Menand</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm eamwqR ad ad--read-more"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--read-more" data-no-id="53htkt"></div></div></div><div class="SummaryCollectnGridToActnWrapper-gnReGN eGayfk"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg 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gay cowboy poetry

Books shelved as gay-wboy: The Pper Prce by Sui Lynn, After the Sunset by Mary Calm, Timg by Mary Calm, My Cowboy Heart by Z.A. Maxfield, and...

Contents:

GAY COWBOY BOOKS

Ask anyone who’s seen Brokeback Mounta (2005) to characterize the film three words, and you’re almost certa to hear some variatn of “gay wboy love-story. Detractors, largely spearhead by right-wg and relig groups, quickly and fervently emed the film’s pictn of a homosexual uple immoral, evince of an attempt to femize men, and even anti-Amerin. In many s, crics honed on the two leads ’ occupatns as wboys, challengg the existence of a “gay wboy” Amerin history.

” Other crics acced filmmakers of phg an “agenda” onto Amerins, wh one wrg that “Hollywood screenwrers and producers thk that ’s their duty to teach Ameri that homosexual nduct and cross-drsg are normal behavrs that should be affirmed Amerin culture. The beliefs, though objectively bafflg, beg tertg qutns: Was homosexualy ever accepted Ameri’s past? Supported by sendary sourc, I will argue that this myth is rooted homoerotic relatnships, a reflectn of historil fact.

DASHG DECEMBER IS THE GAY COWBOY CHRISTMAS ROMANCE WE NEED

In light of this ntentn, I will explore the reali of homosexualy and homosocialy amongst wboys the Old Wt, argug that they were accepted and monplace. ” While Cooper do not tail explic sex between the two, their relatnship is unmistakably homosocial. In this way, Cooper has embedd an acknowledgement of same-sex love the very heart of Amerin myth, directly ntrastg claims that homosexualy is an unnatural and/or morn ventn.

Furthermore, the homosocialy scribed Cooper’s work is not purely imagative, but actually reflective of historil rerds ditg the prence of homoerotic relatnships among wboys the ontier wt, keepg wh Cooper’s assertn that the stori were spired by tal he had been told by actual wboys.

“Homoerotic iendships prerve privilege and ensure survival a hostile wilrns” (Packard 15). Homosexualy was an act, not an orientatn.

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* GAY COWBOY POETRY

Gay Cowboy Books .

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