Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
Musings on poetry and such
This summer I will be replacing the Marginalia exhibit in the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry with one on Poetry in Autograph Books. I think finding poetry-worthy marginalia in old books was kind of a singular phenomenon, meaning, I am crazier about such a thing than most people. It may be that I am crazier about old autograph books than most people, too, but . . . here goes! Continue reading “Forget Me Not: Autograph Book Exhibit”
One day I will have a ROMP gift shop in the ROMP Shop, across the pasture from the museum. I am working on the inventory right now. I want to, of course, sell poetry books in it, and I will stock books by Oklahoma poets. But really, you can easily get a poetry book online. What is a unique kind of poetry book I could sell? Then it came to me: ROMP Annotated Editions. Continue reading “ROMP Thrift Editions . . . coming soon”
Calling all women who love WINE . . . WILDFLOWERS . . . WRITING. We will be doing all three at the Wine, Women & Wildflowers Workshop on May 17, Saturday, from 5:00-8:00 p.m. The photo on the left was taken in one of the fields we will be walking in as we look at wildflowers. Continue reading “WWWW”
I was recently in a group that toured the Enid Symphony Center, which is housed in an old Masonic Lodge building, resplendent in its design. The tour was led by music and executive director Douglas Newell, who offered some wonderful insights about the building, preservation, community involvement, and art in its many forms. In the Ballroom Theatre, four murals illustrate William Morris’s poem “Flora,” a beautiful little homage to the Roman goddess of plants, flowers, and fertility. Continue reading “Flora in Enid”
The academic world of poetry has never interested me as much as the mundane world of poetry. Some people might balk at putting “poetry” and “mundane” in the same sentence, but let’s look at the origin of a word that in the popular imagination means a bunch of negative things: common, ordinary, banal, unimaginative. Continue reading “Poeta Mundanus”
If you don’t believe a story
Can stay with you in the background
Like a picturesque tree you pose before
For all of your life, witness this:
I loved the baking powder can
That Billy saved his money in to buy
Those two redbone coonhounds.
The Clabber Girl with her shy smile
And plate of biscuits sits in my cabinet
And empty on the shelf beside the sink
Where I put twisty ties and pennies. Continue reading “Red Ferns and Red Hounds”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 