Events – Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry

Dark & Scary

October 4, 2015October 4, 2015 ROMPoetry

Come join us at the museum to visit the exhibits AND to tell and to listen to scary poems and stories around a campfire. Bring your scary poem or story to tell. Enter the SCARY POEM Contest and win a prize. All entrants will win something.

Scary Poem Contest–Deadline October 16

Write a scary poem. Make it original and dark and scary . . . Come tell it to us on Dark and Scary Night on Oct. 24. Prizes awarded. Email or mail poem to ROMP. Include name, address, and age.

Oct. 24, Saturday

6:00-9:00 p.m.

Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry

See the VISIT US page for directions.

6:00: MUSEUM Tour

7:00: Scary Poem Contest Awards & Smores-Making

8:00: Scary Poems Around the Fire

Hot chocolate and smores will be served.

FREE and open to the public. Suitable for all ages, but parents be aware if your children do not like scary stories/poems.

For more information, call Shaun at 918-864-9152 or email ROMPoetry@gmail.com. 6619 S 4382 Locust Grove OK 74352

Events

Tin Can Drum Contest

August 26, 2015September 22, 2015 ROMPoetry

As part of the celebration of the fall season, the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry will have a Tin Can Poem Drum Contest. Make a drum from a tin can and come drum it in a rhythm circle at Autumn Movement with us!

Bring your drum out for a contest at the museum:

Saturday, Sept. 26

Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry

5:00-9:00 p.m.

Museum tours at 5:00, a drum workshop at 6:00, folk dancing at 7:00, and a drum circle at 8:00 are the events planned. Drums will be judged and prizes awarded at 6:45.

Events

Things We Would Like to Hear More Often

May 25, 2015May 25, 2015 ROMPoetry

During my POEM LIFE show, I ask the audience to write down things they would like to hear more often, and then I use those words, phrases and sentences in the show. Below is a sampling of some audience offerings. The next POEM LIFE shows are scheduled for May 29 and June 19. Please come to one!

I had a pile of these slips of paper, and I took a picture of them and then just started typing them in the order I picked them up. I like the way they turned out. This is like a poem, and there is a practical side, too: You can see how often you say some of these things that others want to hear.

It’s time to embrace and celebrate our differences.
Let’s take a road trip.
You look great.
What can I do to help/?
I love you.
Longevity.
Yes, more.
Would you like to come over for breakfast?
Money.
You did it.
Money.
You’re beautiful.
Poignant.
Sir, here’s your million dollars.
You can do it!
You are worthy my time and energy.
This tastes great.
Thank you.
You are so creative!
Beautiful.
You’re like a ray of sunshine.
Tolerance.
You are loved.
Stupendous.
I got that for you.
This is exactly where you are supposed to be in this very moment.
Life is beautiful.
Mindfulness.
I’m proud of you.
Earth first always!
Faith in God.
You make things better.
Here’s five dollars.
Let’s go on a road trip.
We are all one.
Thank you.
You are enough.
I love you.
I’m proud of you.
Gosh, you’re so smart.
Go for it, woman.
I love just being with you.
There will be refreshments.
You are good enough.
Good job!
Of course.
How can I help you?
I’ll help you with that!
You know what to do.

–Shaun Perkins

Events

Benches!

May 13, 2015May 13, 2015 ROMPoetry

ROMP recently received a grant for outdoor benches. The benches will replace all the mismatched and falling-apart chairs that I have used since we opened. They will be great for our poetry and storytelling events around the fire and also when we have guest speakers and other outdoor events.

They are currently just lined up near the museum entrance, but they will be easy to move and arrange however they are needed. Next event is May 30: ROMP Wildflower Day. Come take a wildflower walk in the pasture, read some wildflower poems, write your own, and have a seat on a new bench in the beautiful natural surroundings.

Also, be sure to come out on July 10, when ROMP will host Oklahoma’s newest poet laureate Ben Myers for an afternoon on The Possibilities of Poetry.

The grant was from the Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative. Thank you NEOC!

Events, Poems

April 29 Birthday: Rod McKuen

April 28, 2015 ROMPoetry

So Much of Spring

I never saw so much of Spring
as I see now. The tender willow
turning amber. The nightengale,
the sparrow in the heavens
raving.
The moon behind the spider
making web, now blotted out by
geese in trumpet, home again,
home again, home to spring.The toad has found his roadside.
Butterflies are jumping
from cocoons, ants and crickets
share the bush and every truth of
this sweet season.

The moon is now a pearl, a cloud
its shell, as in the tall bamboo and
reed cicadas sing
in four party harmony.

I think the older seasons envy

spring and well they should. The
roses are not blood-red or purple
in extreme. A subtle pink, a lazy
lavender, no single petal scorched
by sun. All things al dente,
underdone.

How is it that in all my years I never
saw this much of Spring? To think
I once believed that tenderness
lay underfoot of Autumn.
I am the aging sparrow’s twin
suffering from ill attention, as all
souls concentrate on April things.

–Rod McKuen

NOTE: In honor of National Poetry Month, each day a person’s birthday will be celebrated with a poem about or by him/her. The poems come from all over the place.

Events, Poems

April 24 Birthday: Barbra Streisand

April 24, 2015April 24, 2015 ROMPoetry

Grizabella Origins
T.S. Eliot

(1) “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”

…Remark the cat
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her coat is torn
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.”
_____________________________

(2) “Grizabella, the Glamour Cat”*

She haunted many a low resort
Near the grimy road of Tottenham Court;
She flitted about the No Man’s Land
From The Rising Sun to The Friend at Hand.
And the postman sighed, as he scratched his head:
“You’d really ha’ thought she’d ought to be dead
And who would ever suppose that that
Was Grizabella, the Glamour Cat!”
________________________________
* from an unpublished fragment by T.S. Eliot.

“Memory”
–by Trevor Nunn and Andrew Lloyd Webber

Midnight,
Not a sound from the pavement.
Has the moon lost her memory,
She is smiling alone.
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet,
And the wind begins to moan.

Memory,
All alone in the moonlight;
I can dream of the old days,
Life was beautiful then.
I remember the time I knew what
happiness was;
Let the memory live again.

Every street lamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning.
Someone mutters and the
street lamp sputters,
And soon it will be morning.

Daylight,
I must wait for the sunrise.
I must think of a new life,
And I mustn’t give in.
When the dawn comes,
Tonight will be a memory, too.
And a new day will begin.

Burnt out ends of smoky days,
The stale cold smell of a morning.
A street lamp dies, another night is over;
Another day is dawning

Touch me,
It is so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun.
If you touch me,
You’ll understand what happiness is.
Look, a new day has begun…

NOTE: In honor of National Poetry Month, each day a person’s birthday will be celebrated with a poem about or by him/her. In this case, Streisand popularized this poem/song. The poems come from all over the place.