Tag: poems
Ordinary Madness
Two friends of the museum, Johnny White and Brittanie Schneider (both excellent poets and artists–and I’m not biased, just because they are former students from my lost teaching years) made the latest poet chair for the museum. I love it, and I think you will, too.
Bukowski Chair Slide Show
We tried to capture the ordinary madness that Bukowski wrote of: the pounding of keys against the page until the ink is gone and it is nothing but a glorified hole puncher, the violence and drunk insanity, and aspirations of greatness cuckolded by reality.–Johnny White
The Cruelest Month: Coming Attractions
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
–T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
What to think of April? Is it the cruelest month? The “idiot, babbling and strewing flowers” as Millay called it? The time when the “shours soote” bathe “every veyne in swich licour” (the sweet showers bathe every plant vein in such liquid), as Chaucer spoke of? Well, it’s all of this and more with cummings’ goat-footed balloon-man whistling far and wee through the “puddle-wonderful” world. Continue reading “The Cruelest Month: Coming Attractions”
27 Years
Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, is released from prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990.
When I was 27, I was pregnant with my son,
And in the third trimester, I went to England,
Experiencing Stratford on Avon, where he heard
His first Shakespeare play—Much Ado About Nothing—
And toured Roman baths and experienced the result Continue reading “27 Years”
V-Day: Some Poetry Happened
Thanks to everyone who made it out for the ROMP V-Day Dog from Hell celebration. Poems were written, poker poetry was played, poems were recorded, the secret corner was inhabited many times, and the pocket poetry case filled up. Check out the slide show to see some highlights.
Dog From Hell: V-Day ROMP Slide Show
Don’t Fear the Poem
Don’t fear the poem.
Baby take my hand.
We’ll be able to fly.
Don’t fear the poem.
La la la la la la la . . .
Apologies to Blue Oyster Cult. When I tell people I am a poet,
A. They run screaming far to uninhabited lands.
B. They want to share their own poems with me.
C. They make a hand gesture to ward off evil.
D. They stare blankly and then change the subject. Continue reading “Don’t Fear the Poem”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 