Zwicky's second essay is a humorously written monologue from the perspective of a cowboy in an Old Western saloon. This piece is an interesting complement to others in the book in that, unlike Bringhurst's discussion, for example, which traces some of the historical rejections of poetry by philosophers, here Zwicky is questioning the fervent celebration of poetry by an influential philosopher, "Marty Heidegger." The cowboy narrator is suspicious of what it means to think of poets the way Heidegger does. To think of language as the constitution of Being and to think of poets as the masters of language potentially eliminates humility from poetic acts of attention. Does the world exist outside of language? The cowboy cautions: "If you think it's obvious the world is out there, turns out you have to give up on bein able to provide a proof fer how you know that." Ultimately, we all have to decide what to believe in; whether it is to follow Heidegger's mythic ethos or acknowledge that there is a world outside of logic, outside of language. This choice, Zwicky reminds us, is fundamentally ethical.

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