"Poet Lariat" Harry Reid, Mark Twain had his own

Mark Steyn signed off his radio program yesterday with a listener's comment on Harry Reid wanting to be the "Poet Lariat."

Was funny, but it rang familiar. I had heard on on old email from the Cowboy Poets a few years back. I had enjoyed some of Baxter Black's ironic poems he recited following some of the horse shows on RFD TV. I looked up Cowboy Poets and signed on for their quarterly emailed newsletter. Then I looked up Baxter Black's poems. I saw that he had been on PBS. That should have been the big clue to there being a snake lurking in that tall grass!

Badger Clark and the "Poet Lariat" by Greg Scott

Greg Scott, historian and author of Cowboy Poetry, Classic Poems & Prose by Badger Clark, offered some comment on the historic use of the term, "Poet Lariat."

In 1937, Leslie Jensen, the Governor of South Dakota, named Badger Clark the first Poet Laureate of that state. Clark responded to Jensen with gratitude and signed the letter "...your poet lariat, Badger Clark." Much has been made of Badger's humorous take on his title. While researching Clarks' life and writing, I came across a beautiful poem he wrote in 1908 while living in Arizona Territory in honor of a neighbor's birthday, he composed a poem for Rita Langley. In it he suggests:

But what good is all this dreaming
We thus have our kingdom yet
King and Queen are John and Rita
I'm the "poet lariat"

I have been curious if this might have been one of the earliest uses of the term "poet lariit," and over the years have looked for earlier references. It was not until I reread Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad that I found what might be the earliest use of the term. In 1867 Twain and many others embarked on a five month trip to the Middle East and Holy Land. Twain went as a correspondent for a couple of newspapers. He later summarized the entire trip in the above mentioned book.

One of Twain's fellow passengers was a man from Long Island named Bloodgood Haviland Cutter (1817-1906), who Twain described: "He dresses in homespun, and is a simple minded, honest, old fashioned farmer with a strange proclivity for writing rhymes. He writes them on all possible subjects and gets them printed on slips of paper with his portrait at the head. These he will give to any man that comes along, whether he has anything against him or not." In the book, Twain calls him the "Poet Lariat" and mentions him frequently as he tells of their travels.

[read more at the above link]