Montana Cowboy Poet Wally McRae Passes at 89

Wallace McRae of Rosebud County died this past week. One of Montana’s great cowboy poets, McRae has received the Montana Book of the Year award, the Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts, was nominated by President Clinton to serve on the National Council of the Arts, was listed by the Missoulian in 1999 as number 42 in the Most Influential Montanans of the Century, and was Inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame. Below is one of his many fine poems:

Things of Intrinsic Worth

Remember that sandrock on Emmells Crick

Where Dad carved his name in ’13?

It’s been blasted down into rubble

And...