The Perspiring Writer Magazine

There is today a popular genre of verse called Cowboy Poetry, published in chapbooks and recited at bookstores and conventions. Contemporary cowboy poetry is probably more polished than the original and, in fact, some of the poets might not be cowboys. This form of expression harkens back to when the American West was being settled. After an arduous day herding cattle, cowhands circled the campfire to spin yarns about posses and lynchings, rustling, cattle drives in frigid wind and rain, humor and sarcasm about tenderfoots, and legends about notorious outlaws. Sometimes these tales were spoken in rhyme, accompanied by a guitar. Country music is said to have evolved from these prairie salons.  

The name Edward Anders Lysaght Griffin sounds like a poet’s name, but not that of a cowboy. Gather ‘round while I retell a story about him written by Paul Higbee in South Dakota Magazine.

When Griffin was born in 1867 in London, his father began grooming him for a naval career. At age, 12, the lad failed the entrance exam so Father shipped him off to schools in France and Germany, this time with hopes for a son as a diplomat. Soon after, Father died, and Edgar joined the Merchant Marines. He eventually disembarked in the U.S. and traveled to Dakota Territory, where a family friend hired him as a ranch hand. Griffin, age 20, succumbed to the powerful mystery and magic of the Black Hills area. With the exception of two years spent in California, he lived in South Dakota for the next fifty years. He married a transplanted Englishwoman and they raised four children on a ranch. His spread was not a monetary success, but he had an advantage others did not. His family and his wife’s had money, and it was rumored that his occasional trips to England were to pad his wallet. Their son, Phil, eventually managed the ranch.

Griffin’s interests were artistic. In 1924, Vail-Ballou published Rhymes Of A Rancher, a chapbook of Griffin’s poetry, some illustrated by the author. Copies are rare; a few in South Dakota libraries, and now and then one appears on eBay at a dear price. I found a reasonably priced one, signed in fancy script, Yrs. Truly, Edw. A. L. Griffin.

The verses are what one might expect, Griffin’s vision of Western life, with its hardships and infinite beauty, spring flowers and a sudden change when snow blankets the pastures. He laments progress: Telephones, automobiles, highways, and tourists. In Reflections Of A Stockman he contrasts the good and the bad about being a stockman.

        It’s great to be a stockman when winter’s mild and bright,

        And hay is plentiful and cheap and loss is very light;

        But when the raging blizzard piles the snowbank mountain high

        The stockman grimly estimates that half his stock will die.

In The Abandoned Stock Ranch, he finishes with:

        The cattle sheds have fallen down,

        The sagging gates swing loose,

        The grass-grown chutes and branding pens

        Are mildewed from disuse;

        While through the skeleton corrals

        The night wind whispers low

        Of stockmen fled and a business dead

        That flourished years ago.

In his unpublished Daddam’s Book Of Unnatural History, Griffin created an alphabetical menagerie of whimsical animals. Viewing the illustrations and reading their names one might think that Griffin had mentored Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak. There’s a moon-doo bat, a u-google, and the zingsquibble. The heir to this book (and other Griffin artwork), is the wife of Griffin’s grandson and namesake. Barbara Griffin owns the copyright to the collection and has tried without success to find a publisher.  

She brings this story full circle. As a boy, her husband disliked the ranch, so when he was in high school he lived in town with his grandparents. On Grandfather’s 70th birthday in 1937, Grandfather Griffin presented to his namesake a colored pencil drawing of an Indian chief in full regalia standing backwards on a mountain ledge, his arms up as if ready to dive. After giving the boy the drawing, the man went to the garage and ended his life. No one knew why.

Seventy years later, a serendipitous purchase provided a clue. Griffin’s great-great-granddaughter, Karla Staihar, bought on eBay a copy of Rhymes Of A Rancher. Scribbled on a page is what might amount to a suicide note, in verse, referring to Old Man Death and that the author would heed the summons without concern. The family speculates that Griffin left the book open to that page, but the vague message went unnoticed that day. The book was probably sold during an estate sale and went from one owner to another over the years. The likelihood of that volume, with the message in it, being returned to the family borders on unbelievable.  

So ends one prairie poet’s tale, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another storyteller. My husband’s Uncle Otto Hansen once suggested that I write about him, because he felt he’d led an interesting life. After a long delay, I pay tribute to him here.  

Born in Nebraska in 1904, Otto grew up on a South Dakota farm near the Missouri River. Never married, he was a farmer, a trapper, a fisherman, a storyteller, a poet, a philosopher, and a friend to University of South Dakota students. He hosted outdoor parties for them at his farm, where beer kegs were quickly emptied and the country air smelled smoky sweet. Otto, however, did not imbibe. The students made him an honorary member of their fraternities and reserved a seat for him at University Homecoming football games.  

Uncle Otto relished an audience of children, for whom he invented songs, recited Indian lore, taught them dances to be done around a campfire, and to count to ten in Lakota. One of his favorite tales was a claim that as a young man he’d been a professional prize fighter. He’d actually gone one round in a bout.

In 1974, a women’s church group requested a collection of his poems to sell at a bazaar (they rejected some as risqué). The booklet, a few typewritten pages stapled between two sheets of construction paper, is called A Book Of Poems, by Otto Hansen. Price Negotiable. His subjects include God, friendship, nature, art, nostalgia for corn husking time, loneliness, sunsets over a blooming prairie, the solace an old trapper finds in wild plum blossoms and wild roses, how a garden in all its glory humbles him, whippoorwills and night hawks, and the cowardly, cunning coyote:

        Out through my frosty windowpane,

        I look upon a landscape bleak,

        When through the snow and freezing rain I see,

        A ghost-like shadow sneak. 

        With tail twixt legs and ears laid low,

        Stealthily he saunters ‘cross the field

        Tracking down a wounded doe . . . .

In his declining years, Uncle Otto resided in a nursing home, where he continued writing poetry. Before his death at age 85, he dictated to his caregiver a poem, The Bells Of St. Helena’s, and requested that it be read at his service. This was done, and the poem was printed on his memorial card.

As for his writing, Uncle Otto explained it years earlier in a footnote to the poem, My Portrait.

I wrote this poem for Vicky as she was having her picture painted to give to her future husband. She said she was going to frame it [the poem] and hang it on the wall. She offered to pay me for it, but I told her my talent was not for sale, but if anyone understands my poems and sees beauty in them, that person is the same kind of person who will notice a little wild rose in the fence line and understand why it’s there, and that is the greatest reward I could ever expect for my writing.