A Cowboy Poetry Gathering in a remote Nevada town recently drew nearly 10,000 poets, would-be poets, and poetry lovers -- and at least one easterner who is eager to bring the show to the Big Apple. The idea is not so outlandish as it first appears: cowboy poets may share some roots and some feelings of defiance with the city's toughest rappers. PNS Correspondent Jon Christensen, a freelance writer based in Carson City, Nev., is the Great Basin regional editor for High Country News.

ELKO, Nev. - Rappers of the Western range came to this remote cowtown early this month for the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering -- and blew the boots off at least one hip poetry scout from New York.

The week-long, 24 hour a day celebration included genuine buckaroos reciting everything from old-time traditional works like "The Legend of Boastful Bill" by Badger Clark, to new offerings like those from Paul "rhymes with whisky" Zarzyski, who calls himself the "Polish-Hobo-Rodeo-Poet."

The gathering drew nearly 10,000 people to Elko this year, including Steve Zeitlin, director of "City Lore," which promotes poetry and folklore. The organization is planning a big "people's poetry celebration" next year in New York City and hopes to bring in rappers together with cowboy poets and other practitioners of the art of recitation.

Zeitlin was impressed. "There was something about watching a thousand people riveted to a cowboy poet's story." He likened it to rap and slam poetry. "The cowboy poets are trying to express things about ranching life that can't be expressed any other way."

Cowboy poetry is much older than rap. The Gathering celebrates poetry recited on cattle drives of the late 1800s, as well as poetry being written today. The novel comparison stems from a recognition of common roots in oral traditions and, more importantly, the growing sense that cowboy poetry is the defiant expression of a threatened way of life.

"I call it cowbonics," said Zarzyski -- a one-time rider of bucking broncos, who has studied and taught poetry at the University of Montana. "Street poets and cowboy poets are both like buffalo -- you can't hold us in, we'll go right through the fences."

Cowboy poetry, like rap, is filled with real life stories and ear-catching rhymes. Folklorists and poets say these movements have reinvigorated American poetry, taking it back from the stuffy ivory tower of post-modern academia. "Rappers and cowboy poets are doing the same thing," said cowboy singer Michael Martin Murphey. "People ignored what they were saying, called it stupid or dumb -- so it rose up in a different form and really zings. We are a social movement in poetry. Agrarian people are saying 'This is how we feel, these are our rights'. It's a political statement when a farmer or rancher in the middle of nowhere says, 'Hey, we're out here."'

"Poetry is the great populist art," said Zeitlin, "but poetry has become too difficult and convoluted. Cowboy poetry and rap take back the spoken word. It's part of a movement to get people to tell their stories. As we're going deeper into a media age, there's a recognition that there's no substitute for the spoken word in stories and poetry and for the opportunity to hear someone's story face to face."

The poetry summit in New York City next year "will be a celebration of people who are not part of the literary tradition of poetry but have always maintained a poetic tradition and passed it on in a traditional folk way," said Hal Cannon, founder of the Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

To explore the roots of cowboy poetry, the gathering this year included readings of pastoral verse from Virgil, Horace and Homer, about farms and horses and bulls.

Performers at the gathering are required to have some experience with the cowboy life, and with livestock, horses and cows. Some are ranchers, the landed gentry of the west. Others are lowly cowpunchers, the migrant labor force of the western range. Some cowboy poets like Zarzyski have made some money with their poetry and become professional performers. Others, such as Murphey, are professional performers who live the cowboy dream by raising horses and cows.