Category: Musings

Musings on poetry and such

Events, Musings, Poems

The Cruelest Month: Coming Attractions

ROMPoetry

wildindigoApril is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

–T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

What to think of April? Is it the cruelest month? The “idiot, babbling and strewing flowers” as Millay called it? The time when the “shours soote” bathe “every veyne in swich licour”  (the sweet showers bathe every plant vein in such liquid), as Chaucer spoke of? Well, it’s all of this and more with cummings’ goat-footed balloon-man whistling far and wee through the “puddle-wonderful” world. Continue reading “The Cruelest Month: Coming Attractions” →

Events, Musings

Don’t Fear the Poem

ROMPoetry

fearDon’t fear the poem.
Baby take my hand.
We’ll be able to fly.
Don’t fear the poem.
La la la la la la la . . .

Apologies to Blue Oyster Cult. When I tell people I am a poet,

A. They run screaming far to uninhabited lands.

B. They want to share their own poems with me.

C. They make a hand gesture to ward off evil.

D. They stare blankly and then change the subject. Continue reading “Don’t Fear the Poem” →

Musings

Langston Hughes’s Birthday

ROMPoetry

langston-hughesToday, 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” →

Musings

Reasons to Visit

ROMPoetry

chairsThere are many reasons you should visit the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry. I will start by listing 10.

  1. You can make poetry from word blocks. Remember, if you call it a poem, it is a poem.
  2. You can play the symbol game, which includes a bottle of gin. (Sorry, it’s empty.)
  3. You can hide in the secret corner and read other people’s secret scribblings. Continue reading “Reasons to Visit” →
Musings

Love Quatrains, Love Poetry & Its Opposite

ROMPoetry

vdaycards1I am making some cards and card booklets for Valentine’s Day for my sister’s shop. So I have been composing little love poems to put in them. It’s a bit hard to write a love poem nowadays. Everything has been said. Or has it? Continue reading “Love Quatrains, Love Poetry & Its Opposite” →