Name Berton Braley | Role Poet | |
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Died January 23, 1966, St. Petersburg, Florida, United States Books Pegasus Pulls a Hack: Me, A Banjo at Armageddon, In Camp and Trench: S, In Camp and Trench: S, Virtues in Verse: The Best of B | ||
Les Brown - Berton Braley - The Will To Win
Jeremy Wolfe ~ Success Poem by Berton Braley 1916
Berton Braley (29 January 1882 – 23 January 1966) was an American poet.
Contents
Life and work
Braley was born in Madison, Wisconsin. His father, Arthur B. Braley, was a judge; he died when Berton Braley was seven years old. At 16, Braley quit high school and got a job working as a factory hand at a plow plant. After a few years, Braley went back to school and received his high school diploma. Shortly thereafter he discovered Tom Hood's poetry instructional book The Rhymester.
Braley was first published at the age of 11 when a small publication printed a fairy tale he wrote. He was a prolific writer, with verses in many magazines, including Coal Age, American Machinist, Nation's Business, Forbes magazine, Harper's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and the Saturday Evening Post. His work appeared in numerous pulp magazines, including Adventure, Breezy Stories, Complete Stories, The Popular Magazine, Short Stories and Snappy Stories. He published twenty books, about half of them being poetry collections.
In 1917, John Philip Sousa composed a marching song for the University of Wisconsin, titled Wisconsin Forward Forever with lyrics by Berton Braley. In 1934, Braley published the autobiographical Pegasus Pulls a Hack: Memoirs of a Modern Minstrel.
His poem "Do It Now" became widely reprinted after 1915. The poem begins:
The poem was also set as a hymn in Presbyterian hymnbooks and sung by glee clubs.
His other popular poems include "Start where you stand"