I had an actual dream about opening a museum that was full of poetry machines. In the dream, the museum was in my grandparents’ old home, which we had turned into a used bookstore and then when it closed, my nephew and his friend moved into it while they are going to college. But the house was also an amalgamation of a psychiatric museum I had visited in St. Joseph, Missouri. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Woody Guthrie
Oklahoma’s True Poet Laureate: Woody Guthrie
My students have been studying the life and work of Woody Guthrie. It’s his centennial, and good old Oklahoma is finally coming around to see what an important man this guy from Okemah really was. My fellow Okies tend to hold a grudge for way too long, and in this case it was never warranted—to think someone was a communist (which he wasn’t) and a socialist (which he was, though didn’t care for the tag) is not a decent reason to deny his value. Continue reading