Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
“The time is out of joint, O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right!”
Hamlet’s couplet is a famous one. Who can resist the pithiness, the efficiency, the rhythm and reason of two short rhyming lines?
Cora the Couplet Crocodile can’t. Continue reading “Cora the Couplet Crocodile”
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves.”
Carl Jung’s words illustrate the importance of play in our lives. From it come the things that make our lives worth living: the art, the dreams, the visions, the connections, the experiences that bring us joy and heartache and shape the people we become.
I have fond memories of the play that took up so much of my childhood. We did not have structured play time, rarely went to camp or to parks or recreational areas, yet I never felt as if I were missing anything. We had the whole world to explore—through riding bikes to the creek or just around the neighborhood, listening to records, exploring the woods behind the house, making tents out of blankets thrown over the clothesline, reading books on the cool concrete of the hillside cellar roof. Continue reading “I Went Out to Play”
The catfish are the Bozos of the bottom,
Blundering from ledges, bumping into me,
Their whiskers slashing my skirt into circus pennants.
Their heads are rocks split across the middle,
Mouths opening slowly as if levered.
They are ugly and regal and harmless,
Even when I forget where I am and startle them
By lifting the sword from the sand
And sending it to the surface before me.
The bass scatter. I speared one once. Continue reading “In the Lake”
A visitor to the museum on Nov. 16 wrote this response to it and gave it to me:
Down Perkins Road, nestled in the trees is a quaint little red barn, welcoming the quiet reader as well as the playful poet. A museum of poetry, this is going to be a new experience. Not knowing what to expect demands an open minded approach; who will be there, what will first be encountered, will on the spot reciting be expected? As it turns out, there are no expectations of unprepared performances; only a relaxing atmosphere that begs the curious reader to look deeper for the next interesting piece left behind by a former guest. Blocks of wood with witty phrases litter the shelves; telling the unskilled poet that it is okay to experiment a little. The ROMP casually opens a new door to creativity that was closed prior to visiting the museum.
–Alvin
Thanks, Alvin. Come back any time.
Art is inspiring, like any creative outlet, and I have an extremely wide view of what creative outlets are: the main thing is that they need to make you feel like Emily Dickinson described when reading poetry: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Continue reading “Art Crawl: Take Your Head Off”
I wanted to uphold the sky
With a bit of twig fallen from a dogwood tree
Or to puncture the soul of the season
With my standing still. Not everything
Is about motion. Not everything is about motion.
Not everything is about motion. Stop. Continue reading “6 Ways of Thinking About Wednesday”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 