Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
Way back in the 80’s, in the time before the interwebs, my college friends and I threw a birthday party for Lloyd, a guy who loved Spam. I’m not kidding: he ate it almost every day, and not because he had to. We made an elaborate Spam boat decorated with marshmallow and cocktail toothpick rigging on a sea of blue-food-coloring-tinged icing. No one could have imagined that the meat product would become one of the most common terms online. Lloyd, did you know? Continue reading “Thankity You!”
Last night, I was entertained by words. They were Joy Harjo‘s. She was at the NSU Ballroom in Tahlequah, and she read poetry, played songs on both the saxophone and flute, read from her memoir Crazy Brave, and shared her wisdom about writing, stories, poetry, and living the journey of life.
I just finished reading Crazy Brave last weekend. It is a short, fluent, plainly-spoken yet lyrical overview of her childhood and schooling and the path that brought her to poetry. When I finished the book, my first thought was: Well, this is Part 1 surely. I wanted to ask her that last night, but there was no time. However, she did confirm that the memoir ended where she had originally intended to begin it. Continue reading “The Knowing Heart”
I will be in San Diego this weekend spreading poetic love, wisdom, and fortunes. Specifically, I will be leaving the following playing cards with fortunes on them wherever we happen to go in the city. The fortunes are couplets I created for the poetic fortune machine in the museum, but they work well on playing cards, too. Continue reading “A Poet in San Diego”
In the museum, there is a place called the Secret Corner. There are poems about secrets and a book of secret poetry. There is a large comfy chair covered in red velvet there, and you need to sit in it and just look around and think and then write if you want to. There are pictures and drawings and sayings all around. There is also a box for secrets.
Continue reading “Clearing Out the Secrets”
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?”
for Ken
The burn pile is full of branches
You wrested from a neglected arbor.
They will light the November sky
When we find the perfect chilly night. Continue reading “Nuisance”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 