​Meeting The Badger

 It was my great pleasure to become acquainted with Badger Clark, the true Poet Lariat, in 1940 when I was twelve attending a week-long youth camp  at Victoria Springs Nebraska State Park in Custer County Nebraska. He was the primary entertainer at the event and had reading sessions every day. I was totally captured by the cowboy theme and sought out The Badger numerous times when he was not performing. 

Under his tutoring, I became even more enthused about true cowboy poetry which he described as featuring western life in modern or historic settings; using true rhymes (shove/love, not clove/love); using a consistent rhyming pattern; and having a consistent meter based on syllable count .

An example using syllable counts of eight and six for the lines and a rhyming pattern of ABCB:

 Sam, a backward  cowboy poet,
is challenged by a curse
'cause ev'ry poem that he writes
turns out to be inverse. 

 

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