Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
DEFINITION
A field guide is a brochure designed to help the reader identify exhibits in a poetry museum or other objects of natural occurrence (e.g. minerals). It is generally designed to be brought into the ‘field’ or local area where such objects exist to help distinguish between similar objects. Field guides are often designed to help users distinguish poets and poems that may be similar in appearance but are not necessarily closely related. Continue reading “ROMP Field Guide”
Today, Feb. 1, is Langston Hughes’ birthday. I think he is one of America’s greatest poets, and I have always enjoyed his poetry. Even though he lived most of his life in New York, he was born not far from the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry, in Joplin Missouri, a town just across the border about 90 minutes away. Continue reading “Langston Hughes’s Birthday”
![PerilsOfPaulineTiedToRailwayTracks[4]](https://rompoetry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/perilsofpaulinetiedtorailwaytracks4.jpg)
He kicked me in his sleep,
But when he woke up,
He said he was kicking a bad guy
Who was trying to get me.
I am always being chased
By bad guys in his dreams,
And he is always saving me. Continue reading “I Beat Manuela”
What do you notice in winter stillness?
Does the stillness allow you to be still,
Also? Or does it make you want to move
In ways that keep you from noticing?
The honeysuckle vines are disappearing
From the fence rows, the wild rose bushes
Rooted out like kudzu by backhoes
Trained to pasture and emptiness. Continue reading “Aware of Birds Missing”
I am looking at you through a window
I work to keep open, through the world
At 50, and I’m seeing a landscape
I had not anticipated, a life waving
In this still image from the abandoned garage Continue reading “Abandon”
Stillness at the depths and movement
Above before the change, the contact
That transforms element, strips you
Of the life you have been, willing or not,
Which is not the question. Here,
In the icy crucible, you have no choice Continue reading “At Moon Valley Road”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 