Foreword

In the foreword to Mike Logan's Bronc To Breakfast, Wally McRae dubs him a master craftsman and storyteller.  That pair of top-hand qualities is more than what most cowboy poets pack as they shake their faces for their first chutegates--as they spur out their first books of verses.

Laugh Kills Lonesome is Mike's second book, however, and we, as readers, have the right to expect an even stronger lick-something "new and improved."  And, by God, that's exactly what you'll find gracing the following pages.  Though it seems hardly possible, there's a more adventurous imagination working behind these poems, as evidenced by the witty and alliterative "Gaggles 'n Gangs, McCartys 'n Hangs":

If turtles, they all crawl in "bales"

And apes, they're called a "shrewdness,"

Could a crew of drunken cowhands

Be labeled as a crudeness?

As well as a much richer diction and keener image, such as that loping through the poem "Temptation":

'Til your horse kicks up an arrowhead 

Down near the bison kill

Or he tries the road that swings around

The old bootlegger's still.

And, to boot, genuine humor-the kind sparked by that fine-focused, you-bet-I've-been-there detail, highlighted in the poem "Ranch Truck":

Hayhooks festoon the gearshift.

There's stockwhips on the seat.

Ol' Skipper's on the towchains

That's piled beneath my feet.

Perhaps Mike Logan's greatest gift to his readers, however, is his uncanny knack for capturing historical facts, embellished with just the right pinch of drama and/or myth, in a way that permits us, a century later, to ride through the picture-Lonesome Dove style!  Of the same grand vintage as his earlier piece, "The Wolf Creek Stage," here he gives us "Laugh Kills Lonesome," the title poem, and "Behold A Pale Horse," which very well could be Mike's most powerful writing to date.

This is all to say that if Bronc To Breakfast quirted your ticker from a walk into a trot, then Laugh Kills Lonesome-you can bet your riggin' sack, your favorite cowdog, AND THE RANCH-will spur your heart into a full gallop.  These well-crafted, emotionally honest poems, along with Mike Korn's fancy-filigreed, silver-conchoed sketches riding shotgun, should make old Mike Logan and young Kid Russell both proud.

Paul Zarzyski