Charles Badger Clark

Charles Badger Clark (January 1, 1883 – September 26, 1957) was an American cowboy poet.[1][2][3][4]

Charles Badger Clark
BornJanuary 1, 1883
Albia, Iowa, U.S.
DiedSeptember 26, 1957
Alma materDakota Wesleyan University (did not graduate)
OccupationPoet

Early life

Charles Badger Clark was born on January 1, 1883 in Albia, Iowa.[1][5] His family moved to Dakota Territory, where his father served as a Methodist preacher in Huron, Mitchell, Deadwood and Hot Springs.[1][2][3] He dropped out of Dakota Wesleyan University after he clashed with one of its founders, C.B. Clark.[1][5] He travelled to Cuba, returned to Deadwood, South Dakota, where he contracted tuberculosis, then moved to Tombstone, Arizona to assuage his illness with the dry weather.[1][3][4][5] He returned again to South Dakota in 1910 to take care of his ailing father.[1][2][3][4]

Career

Clark published his first poetry collection in 1917. In 1925, he moved to a cabin in Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where he lived for thirty years and continued to write poetry.[1][2][4][5][6]

Clark was named the Poet Laureate of South Dakota by Governor Leslie Jensen in 1937.[2][7] His work was published in Sunset Magazine, The Pacific Monthly, Arizona Highways, Colliers, Century Magazine, the Rotarian, and Scribner's.[7]

Death and legacy

Clark died on September 26, 1957.[3]

His poem entitled "Lead My America" was performed by the Fred Waring Chorus in 1957.[5] In 1969, Bob Dylan recorded "Spanish is the Loving Tongue".[3] In America by Heart, Sarah Palin quotes his poem entitled "A Cowboy's Prayer" as one of the prayers she likes to recite.[8] In 1989, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[9]

Bibliography
  • Grass-Grown Tales (1917)
  • Sun and Saddle Leather (1919)
  • Spike (1925)
  • When Hot Springs Was a Pup (1927)
  • God of the Open
  • Sky Lines and Wood Smoke (1935)
  • The Story of Custer City, S.D. (1941)
  • Boot and Bylines (posthumous, 1978)
  • Singleton (posthumous, 1978)

Books
  • Jessi Y. Sundstrom: Badger Clark, Cowboy Poet with Universal Appeal, Custer, S.D., 2004

References
  1. Badger Clark Memorial Society, biography
  2. Dakota Wesleyan University biography Archived 2011-05-26 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Black Hills Visitor Magazine biography
  4. Marsha Trimble, 'Who is Badger Clark?', in True West Magazine, 08/25/2009 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 2011-01-04.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. South Dakota Public Broadcasting biography
  6. Badger Hole
  7. Badger Clark Memorial Society, homepage
  8. Sarah Palin, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010, pp. 230-231
  9. "Hall of Great Westerners". National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Retrieved November 21, 2019.
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