In the museum, there is a place called the Secret Corner. There are poems about secrets and a book of secret poetry. There is a large comfy chair covered in red velvet there, and you need to sit in it and just look around and think and then write if you want to. There are pictures and drawings and sayings all around. There is also a box for secrets.
Continue reading “Clearing Out the Secrets”
Author: ROMPoetry
The Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry is an interactive museum where the common person and poetry meld. ROMP is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.
Enter Reaching
Red. Yellow. Green. Hint of blush and falling leaf,
Necessary as bread, sweetness of life lived
Out of time and in the stolen, hidden moments
We forget even as we breathe them in. Red.
Yellow. Green. You see them from a distance
In the orchards between farmhouses, bruised
In the stiffening grass, marked by months
On limbs, marked by limbs branched over secrets
The seasons tell. Hard to hold, skin a sheen
Of untouching, one’s own skin aged in comparison. Continue reading “Enter Reaching”
You Will Be Found
If you hide from the snow, you will
Be found, not by the conformity of color
But by the negation of it. You have lived
Long in the cave of steel and wire,
Long in the forest of electric hum.
It is the day for you to make new
Memories. Continue reading “You Will Be Found”
Story-Poems: Which Do You Like?
What are your earliest poetry memories? Mine seem to revolve around narrative poems. I particularly remember reading Longfellow’s “Evangeline” in junior high and getting to actually illustrate parts of it. I remember drawing Evangeline and thinking the situations in that very long poem were so far-away and unreal to me, and I tried to make her real by drawing her. To this day, I can picture the little white bonnet and apron I put on her and the long plain green dress, only a few wisps of her brown hair visible coming out of the bonnet. Continue reading “Story-Poems: Which Do You Like?”
On the Web & Coming to an NPR Station Near You
The radio show State of the ReUnion visited the museum back in August as part of a story about Tulsa. Listen to their story about us (it’s about 4 minutes) and watch the slide show of photos taken during their visit. You can also listen to the whole show about Tulsa. Thanks, Al and Delaney from State of the ReUnion.
The SOTR shows are all on its website, but they are also picked up by NPR stations across the country.
Go to SOTR’s website and listen to more of their stories from this season and past seasons. They are wonderful works of storytelling, listening, witness and documentation.
State of the ReUnion website: Tulsa (with ROMP) story
Recent Poetry Machines
POETIC FORTUNE MACHINE
For the price of a measly quarter, you can have a beautiful poetic fortune–a couplet that will set you on the path to riotuous living and harmony or debauchery and ditch-sleeping, whichever you prefer.
But wait, there’s more . . . if you also want a poetic fortune and cannot come toot sweet to the museum to insert your quarter into the machine, I will gladly do it for you. Send a U.S. dollar bill to my PayPal account (okieload@sstelco.com), and I will put a quarter in the machine for you and then email you a photo of the fortune you get! Continue reading “Recent Poetry Machines”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 