This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
South Dakota writer and rancher Linda Hasselstrom is one of the featured voices in SDPB's celebration of the life of Clark, the documentary "Badger Clark: Poet Among the Pines."
She remembers the childhood letter she received from the cowboy poet that started her on the path to publication.
Now, Hasselstrom is an award-winning poet whose work appears in several books and anthologies. Learn more about Hasselstrom's work.
She joined In the Moment to discuss her relationship to Clark's work and her connection to the man himself.
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The following transcript was auto-generated.
Lori Walsh:
SDPB celebrates the life of Badger Clark, our first poet laureate. You can find our documentary, "Badger Clark, Poet Among the Pines," online at sdpb.org/watch.
Well, one of the South Dakotans who talks about Badger Clark in the film is South Dakota writer and rancher, Linda Hasselstrom.
She's an award-winning poet. Her books include "Bitter Creek Junction," "Gathering from the Grassland: A Plains Journal" and her latest book, "Walking: The Changes."
Linda stopped by the SDPB Black Hill studios for this conversation.
You have such a wonderful connection with Badger Clark and his poetry, but also with the man because you were neighbors. Tell me a little bit about being a young child and getting your first copy of a Badger Clark collection.
Linda Hasselstrom:
Well, the sad part about it was that in spite of being neighbors, I never met him. But my first Badger Clark book is inscribed in my grandmother's shaky handwriting in the back to my dear little granddaughter, Linda, for her 15th birthday, July 14, 1958, Cora Hay.
Lori Walsh:
Wow.
Linda Hasselstrom:
And she gave me a copy of "Skylines and Wood Smoke." Now, my grandmother never finished 8th grade. She had siblings to take care of, and she didn't spell very well. One of the things I did was write letters for her sometimes. So, for her to find a book of poetry that she thought I'd enjoy and give it to me was a remarkable act.
Lori Walsh:
At the age of 15. How did you use that poetry book? Did you read it? Did you memorize it? What was its role in your life?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Oh, I absolutely memorized some of the poems and began, of course, writing rhymed iambic pentameter, which I eventually gave up because unless you're as good as Badger at it, you ought to give it up and not enough poets give it up. So, we're swamped with bad examples of rhyming iambic pentameter, but Badger Clark did it well.
Lori Walsh:
He did it well indeed. Tell me a little bit about moving the cattle because you've told me this story before and I just love to hear you tell it again about that iambic pentameter is useful on the back of a horse.
Linda Hasselstrom:
It fits right in with the way horses walk, and so I found that some of the Badger Clark poems that I had read, I started remembering them as I was riding along behind the cattle on my horse, and pretty soon I was able to recite some of these poems. And occasionally, my father did not approve of swearing and sound carries very well on the prairie, so if I swore at a cow, he would remonstrate with me later at noon.
So, I got to doing things like bellowing, "And round up on the hill [inaudible 00:03:23]."
Which has a tendency to crack up technicians in public broadcasting rooms and also to make cows move faster.
Lori Walsh:
Maybe it'll make our staff move faster too.
Linda Hasselstrom:
I hope they don't all resign.
Lori Walsh:
We have a very swift-moving staff, so I actually need them to slow down a little bit sometimes for my benefit.
The content of the poem, the words had meaning, the rhythm had meaning, but what about what he had to say? What resonated with you then?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Oh, just that knowledge of being out in space. Oh Lord, I've never lived where churches grow and what I was looking at over in our east pasture was what Badger seemed to be seeing. And as a ranch child, I really identified with, "I'm no slave of whistle, clock or bell nor weak-eyed prisoner of wall and street."
And you understand that at that point, I had escaped from being a weak-eyed prisoner of wall and street. My mother had married a rancher when I was 9 years old. We moved out to the ranch. I immediately got a horse and began to have the freedom to go anywhere I could open and shut the gates, which gave me several thousand acres of freedom before long. And I really identified with, "give me work that's open to the sky; make me a pardner of the wind and sun, and I won't ask a life that's soft or high."
That was my idea of perfect, perfect life.
Lori Walsh:
When did you start writing and was it connecting at the same time, immediate?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Oh, absolutely. I'm not aware of having written anything before.
I was 9 years old, but the minute I moved out to that ranch, there were things I wanted to remember. I'd be moving cattle and see a coyote slinking off to the side to get out of our way, and I wanted to remember how it moved. And I wanted to remember how the cows behaved with their calves and everything. And I started writing everything down and my mother paid attention to this kind of thing and started giving me little journals, little tiny notebooks, and they were smaller at the beginning and they've gotten larger over time, but they still fit in my purse. But I started carrying them with me in the pocket of my jeans or my shirt so I could write even while I was riding.
Lori Walsh:
Did you become a better seer or listener?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Oh, absolutely.
Lori Walsh:
Were you aware of that happening? Was there a moment of sort of self-aware learning or did that just happen gradually as you spent more time in your notebook?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Boy, I'm not sure. I think I was probably aware of it because it became very important to me to write these things down and take notes about these things. So, I am not around small children today by my preference, but my impression is that they are glued to their electronic media and aren't looking around at what's happening around them.
I think this is probably less true of ranch kids who can get bit by a rattlesnake if they're not paying attention. But I think it's very important and it's something that needs to be done. Look around.
Lori Walsh:
Look around. South Dakota and the place that you were was worthy of his words and yours, and so much in our lives we encounter as South Dakotans pushes back against us on that idea. But you more than anybody, I'm going to stand by that, you more than anybody as a South Dakota writer have said, we are worthy of language and attention.
Linda Hasselstrom:
Thank you. That really has been an aim of mine, and I don't know at what point it became a conscious aim, but South Dakota is one of those states that there are several well-known quotes about people leaping over this area, and I want people to know that it's valuable. I also want them to know that it's valuable as it is, and that we don't necessarily want you coming out here to fix it and modernize it and make it more with it. We like some of it the way it is. We like ranching the way it is. I've had people who actually came to me and suggested that my land is just fine as long as I plowed it up and grew artichokes or something to feed people and total lack of understanding, which of course, then I have to explain to them a great length.
Lori Walsh:
You wrote Badger Clark a letter. You said you never met him, but you wanted to. Tell me a little bit about the letter that you wrote to him.
Linda Hasselstrom:
Well, when I was in 8th grade in Hermosa school, the teacher somehow became aware that I was an admirer of Badger Clark. I probably recited some of the poems or something and decided that he should come to our school to speak to our school 8th grade graduation, and he was doing a lot of that then.
So I wrote to him and asked him, I was writing to arrange him for him to come down to our school. He complimented me on my spelling. He said my spelling was excellent, and I was in the middle of arranging with him to come down to school when he died.
And I recently, I went back to the Hermosa School in preparation actually for this interview, I went back to Hermosa School and said, do you have those papers? And they said that at the time, the custom was for the teacher to take anything like that with her. And they couldn't even find records on who that teacher was, but she's probably long dead and her relatives probably tossed the papers.
Lori Walsh:
You do have a copy of his words on the Windbreak House blog archives, and he does say, "I want to congratulate you on being able to express yourself on paper." What did that mean for you?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Oh my. That probably started this whole thing, 17 books later. We can blame it on Badger Clark because I don't think it had occurred to me that my writing could be books until then. He did books, but I didn't think I could.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, writing and reading are both neglected arts in these days. There's also this absolutely poignant letter that he wrote you, a postcard, I think you say, in this blog archive right before he died saying, well, we're going to push this back to the fall, but don't worry, this may look like a long time to you, but when you're my age—
Linda Hasselstrom:
Well at my age, it ain't, it ain't, it ain't.
Lori Walsh:
It ain't.
Linda Hasselstrom:
And he knew that I'd know that that was colloquial and not correct. And now that I am 80 years old, which is older than he got to be, I really sense the importance of those words. It ain't.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. In my middle age, Linda, one of the things that I am learning anew is that I will have to carry all the grief with me if I am lucky enough to become 80, and I hope that I am that it will be cumulative. And I know this is maybe deeper than where we want to go, so we'll veer off. But you have experienced grief in a way that it doesn't get any easier, does it?
Linda Hasselstrom:
No.
Lori Walsh:
No.
Linda Hasselstrom:
The death of one husband doesn't make the death of the second one any easier to take.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. I'm so sorry that that has been part of your recent story. Why do we need, in times like these, whether we think about the world or whether we think about fate that takes people away from us, why do books, why does poetry still something we return to again and again? Even if it doesn't soothe us, even if it doesn't change anything, why do we reach for it?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Because it does.
Lori Walsh:
It does.
Linda Hasselstrom:
It tells us about the things that we've suffered, and it says it in ways that we haven't been able to say.
Lori Walsh:
When you look back at his poetry books now, and you have some amazing copies, do you read them differently than you did when you were a young person?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I saw the joy in them before, the riding and the joyfulness, but now I can see some of the sorrow.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
Linda Hasselstrom:
Here's a little, "Yours is the sunny blue roof I ride under mountain and plane of the house you have made, sometimes it roars with the wind and the thunder, but in your house, I am never afraid."
Lori Walsh:
Oh. Thank you. I just picked up a copy of your book at the Festival of Books. Well, explain to people how you did the hot springs, how Badger you wrote about hot springs, and then how you brought that to other readers.
Linda Hasselstrom:
Well, the wonderful thing about that book is that Peggy Sanders found the photographs to go with the book, "When Hot Springs Was a Pup," and that expanded what he had done a great deal. And the really important thing that I want to say about that book right now is that this is the phrasing that I used because I like Badger Clark enjoy thinking of his words, entertaining readers for years to come. I hereby give my copyrights to all of the material in which I have a vested interest in the 2020 interest of "When Hot Springs Was a Pup" to the Fall River County Historical Society and Pioneer Museum. So, that gift is intended to let that nonprofit organization to be the exclusive publishers of that book. And I think that Badger would really enjoy knowing that the people in Hot Springs would continue to benefit from the historical society and from his words.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, that is a remarkable gift. May I press you for another gift, which is some sort of reading of the Badger Clark poem of your choice.
Linda Hasselstrom:
Oh, dear. Well, let's see what I can do. Okay, here it is. This is called "The Coyote"
"Trailing the last gleam after, in the valleys emptied of light, ripples a whimsical laughter under the wings of the night. Mocking the faded west airily, meeting the little bats merrily, over the maces it shrills to the red moon on the hills.
"Mournfully rising and waning, far through the moon-silvered land wails a weird voice of complaining over the thorns and the sand. Out of blue silences eerily. On to the black mountains wearily, till the dim desert is crossed, wanders the cry, and is lost.
"Here by the fire's ruddy streamers, tired with our hopes and our fears, we inarticulate dreamers hark to the song of our years. Up to the brooding divinity far in that sparkling infinity cry or despair and delight, voice of a Western night!"
Lori Walsh:
I love this.
Linda Hasselstrom:
One of my favorite Badger Clark poems, and one I can still hear when I go outside at night or the coyotes, some of them sometimes they get very close. I don't let my Westie out after dark.
Lori Walsh:
Okay, good to know.
Linda Hasselstrom:
But I also look at this as a writer, and I think he set himself an interesting problem here to do that airily, merrily, wearily, eerily, divinity, infinity, what a problem to set yourself as a writer. I wouldn't start out thinking, well, I think I'll do that just to challenge myself. And he did, and he made it work.
Lori Walsh:
Going back to what you said in the beginning, this is I think one of the great deceptions of Badger Clark that people put him in. I remember being out at Badger Hole and reading some of the work that was placed around the cabin. I didn't realize that he was that sophisticated. So many people make assumptions because of the iambic pentameter because of the content of his work that it was unsophisticated, and it was anything but.
Linda Hasselstrom:
I've gone to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering many times over the years, and it's one of the things, it's a fantastic thing. It's a great thing to be doing. It has brought out of the woodwork some amazing poets who never would have seen their work in print and who were real cowboys. It also encourages some of the most horrible examples of iambic pentameter where I would be backstage just holding something over my face to keep from collapsing in hysterical laughter at this earnest person out there trying desperately to express himself.
Lori Walsh:
Keep trying, keep trying.
Linda Hasselstrom:
All in all, it's good. Yes. And I always encourage him to keep at it.
Lori Walsh:
Keep going.
Linda Hasselstrom:
I wasn't any good when I started either. You have to keep at it.
Lori Walsh:
One of the things that you have taught me as a writer, I owe much of my writing practice to the workshops I've taken from you and to the books that you have written for me.
One of the things that's close to my heart is your connection with being under the sky. I'm likely to have my nose in a book. I'm likely to be indoors, and you constantly, not when I was a child, I was always outside then, but work has pressed me indoors. You're always reminding me to put my feet on the ground.
Linda Hasselstrom:
We let that happen, and I let it happen to myself. I sit in front of my computer and get absorbed in something, and that's another good reason to have a dog. You have to go outside every now and then.
Lori Walsh:
Yes. I love that. Anything else you want us to say about Badger Clark or about poetry in South Dakota today? What do you want to leave listeners with, Linda?
Linda Hasselstrom:
Write, write. Write what you think. Write what you believe. Write it down, and don't throw it away. Sure, you'll look back at some of it later and be embarrassed by it. But that's you. That's your life. Write it. Keep track of it.
Lori Walsh:
One of South Dakota's great writers, Linda Hasselstrom, and you can find Badger Clark, Poet Among the Pines on our website, sdpb.org/watch.
