Cowboy Poetry for Independence Day Celebration

Ever since the first year of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the Gathering has featured a keynote address discussing a topic relevant to cowboy poetry, ranch culture, and the contemporary rural West. “Big Jim” Griffith, one of the event’s founders, delivered the very first keynote, a wonderful primer and introduction to cowboy poetry that set the tone for the first Gathering in 1985, and all the ones that followed. Jim Griffith was a folklorist based in southern Arizona, established the So