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Podcast: Texas Standard » Stories from Texas
Episode: Think There’s No Poetry In Texas? Think Again
Description: A New Yorker told me that he never uses the words Texas and poetry in the same sentence.
He thinks Texas poetry is an oxymoron because he doesn’t see how such a refined art form could be produced in a macho culture. But he is wrong. Cowboys and vaqueros were reciting poetry in the warm glow of firelight on the Texas plains hundreds of years ago.
A modern inheritor of this tradition is Walt McDonald. He gives us this poem that celebrates country music in Texas. It’s called “The Waltz We Were Born For.”<...