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”
Tag: creative writing
The First of May
The verbena comes back,
As the wind makes its way
Down the same dirt track,
In the same sort of day.
The fleabane claims the field
As the rain makes spring feet
In the garden newly tilled
Before the summer’s heat. Continue reading “The First of May”
Poeta Mundanus
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”
Red Ferns and Red Hounds
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”
Object Transformation
When I was teaching high school English, I spent the month of April on poetry. Yes, the state was going berserk doing tests, TESTS, T E S T S but in between all that nonsense, it was the perfect time for poetry. (And it’s National Poetry Month, after all). If you have made a space for poetry in your classroom, meaning that your students know it is okay to experiment with words, to break rules, to have fun with the language, then give them a break with something like this: Continue reading “Object Transformation”
Poetry Post Office
NOTE: The following was written and given to me after our festival. If you attended and would also like to make a comment, please reply in the Comments below.
My favorite part of the ROMP Poetry Festival was the letters that had the names of different authors on the envelope. I picked out James Wright and the poem inside was called “Beginning.” I really loved this poem instantly and found myself thinking that I needed to find a book of poems by James Wright. Continue reading “Poetry Post Office”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 