Cowboy poets take hats off for humble storyteller

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ANTELOPE ISLAND - To the hundreds of folks who journeyed to the historic Fielding Garr Ranch here over the weekend, the third-annual Cowboy Poetry & Music Gathering was a celebration of the rural West.

For the poets involved, however, the three-day event was bittersweet. One of their own, beloved cowboy poet Colen H. Sweeten Jr., was gone.

A major figure in the cowboy-poetry world, Sweeten published five books of poetry, won numerous awards, performed throughout the West and once recited a poem for Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show." The 88-year-old died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Springville.

"He was like the grandfather of all the Utah [cowboy] poets," Jan Erickson, of Kaysville, said Sunday afternoon as poets and musicians performed on an outdoor stage under blustery skies. Erickson and other Utah cowboy poets interrupted Saturday's program to pay tribute to Sweeten with music, verse and fond reminiscences.

"We all took our hats off and bowed our heads and said thanks for having known him," said Western musician Lisa Stubblefield, who organized the Antelope Island event. "He was the type of storyteller that if you were sitting with him and a bunch of people around a campfire, you wouldn't want anyone else to say a word."

Once described as "Western America's Will Rogers," Sweeten grew up on a ranch near Holbrook, Idaho, and attended high school in nearby Malad, just north of the Utah border. He spent decades there farming and raising cattle, which gave him fodder for warm, witty poems about riding horses and branding pigs.

A cowboy poet before the art form became popular, Sweeten published his poems in newspapers, read them on the radio and recited them from memory at hundreds of Western-themed gatherings across North America. He was a featured performer every year at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev. Sweeten also was a favorite of "singing cowboy poet" Michael Martin Murphey, who invited him to be his opening act every time the singer-songwriter's tour passed within driving distance of Sweeten's home.

In 2000 Sweeten and his wife, Ruth, moved from Idaho to Springville, where he became active in Utah cowboy poets' gatherings. The bespectacled Sweeten performed in public as recently as March, when he took the stage at the Canyon Country Western Arts Festival in Cedar City.

Fellow cowboy poets on Sunday remembered him as a clever wordsmith and a humble man who encouraged younger poets, made friends easily and was always quick with a joke.

"He loved everything about the cowboy way of life. And he was loved by everybody," said Val Carter, president of Cowboy Poets of Utah, an association formed to perpetuate American West traditions of poetry, storytelling and music. "It was like the whole room would light up when Colen was there."

"He'd just stand up at the mike and tell these stories. He had a poem for every occasion," said cowboy poet Paul Bliss, of Salem. "There are other poets who are more famous. But that's because he didn't seek the limelight. It came to him."

griggs@sltrib.com