New Book from Nancy Bo Flood and Jeanne Bowman. Badger Clark (1883–1957), South Dakota’s first poet laureate, is best known for his “A Cowboy’s Prayer,” erroneously attributed to Anonymous and a mainstay at rodeos across the United States. After spending much of his childhood in Deadwood, SD, Badger escaped a harrowing experience in Cuba and then found his vocation as a cowboy and a poet in Arizona. He had a way of expressing that smooth, rolling, clip-clop rhythm of horse and rider.