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?”
Category: Musings
Musings on poetry and such
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”
Identification or How To Tell If You are Dead
I enjoy old books about the craft of poetry. My favorite, which I refer to often, is The Winged Horse by Joseph Auslander and Frank Ernest Hill from 1927. I have recently been reading The Order of Poetry, a 1961 text by David Silver.
In these old texts about poetry’s craft, I like the unequivocal language, the arrogance of intent: We are writing about the most important thing in the world, the dedication to specific words within a poem, the love of . . . a pervasive yet maligned art.
Silver just gave me a new way of explaining the difference between metaphor and simile (it seems so trite, so inadequate just to say that one is direct and one uses “like” or “as”—it’s like a kindergarten definition, isn’t it?). First Silver is highfalutin: “The differences between metaphor and simile are in grammatical procedure, in the degree of demand on the reader’s imagination, and in psychological effect, but not in kind.” Hmmmm. But he gets clearer: Continue reading “Identification or How To Tell If You are Dead”
On the Line
I still show up to find out
what happened to me
and the rest of us, to know how a plot
continues without the characters,
how my turn of phrase
feels in someone else’s mouth,
in a different land, in a
country beyond our imagining. Continue reading “On the Line”
Altar of Alliteration
Come out to the museum this Saturday from 6-9 p.m. and experience the . . . Altar of Alliteration! Did you say that in your head with thunderclaps in the background? You should. Treasure Time is Sep. 14: We are going to have a poem treasure hunt, refreshments, museum tours, and creating of much poetic energy and stuff. Please come if you like poetry. Please come if you don’t (I will alter that with my altar).
The commonly-confused word lesson you just got is free of charge.
Pick a jar from the altar. Each jar includes 5 items that begin with the same letter. Compose a poem or something with all 5 words in it. Display it for others to experience. You have alliterated, my friend. Continue reading “Altar of Alliteration”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 