‘A big bad bull whipped me down’: cowboy poetry, old art form of the US west, lassos a new generation

From Los Angeles to Nevada, younger people are preserving a longstanding tradition one lyric at a time

Deep in the heart of Los Angeles's Koreatown, just a few doors down from H Mart and a K-pop music superstore, an American flag hangs over the entrance of a saloon called Eastwood.

The western-themed bar would normally be cranking Luke Bryan while customers play skee-ball, line dance and get bucked off their mechanical bull named Gucci. But tonight, the music is low and the loudest sounds come from the clacking of vintage mechanical typewriters. About 30 people in the bar are drafting poems about horses, sunsets and Stetson hats - which are plentiful atop the heads in the crowd.

Heck, they thought they killed me back in 15

flew me out in a chopper, covered me with a sheet.