All This Way for the Short Ride: Roughstock Sonnets, 1971-1996: Poems

by Paul Zarzyski

A true renaissance of cowboy arts is under way, fueled by the Cowboy Poetry Movement with it burgeoning audience and astonishing book sales. Spurring this popular movement on are poets such as Paul Zarzyski. Energetic, literary, wise, and witty, he applies contemporary poetry to cowboy themes of loss and loneliness, the freedom of the open range, and the thrill of the eight-second ride.

All This Way for the Short Ride combines a dozen of the best poems from Zarzyski's popular book Roughstock Sonnets (Lowell Press, 1989), with twenty new poems and thirty-five photographs by celebrated photographer Barbara Van Cleve.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1996

Reviews

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an entertaining and moving collection of 32 poems by Montana poet Paul Zarzyski, who belongs to that rarified fraternity of rodeo cowboy poets. The intensity and focus required for riding roughstock are transferred into these highly charged poems, and most of them have the headlong intensity of a high-scoring 8-second ride.

Some of my favorite Zarzyski poems are included in this collection: "Buck," a Christmas-time lament for a dead horse; "To Wallace," a tribute to rancher-poet Wallace McRae; "Partner," about the fierce and loving bond between two rodeo friends, dedicated to Montana writer, Kim Zupan; "Monte Carlo Express - Box 258, 15.3 Miles Home," about reading mail while driving a speeding car; and the high-spirited "Escorting Granny to the Potluck Rocky Mountain Oyster Feed at Bowman's Corner." The best, of course, is the title poem, "All This Way for the Short Ride," about the death of another rider.

There's an appreciative foreword by Wyoming-born western writer, Teresa Jordan, and 27 wonderful black-and-white rodeo photographs by Montana photographer Barbara Van Cleve, taken between the years 1971-1996. An excellent addition to any bookshelf of Western literature.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cowboy poetry that explores the loneliness of the road and the addicted lust to pursue the rodeo circuit.