Wacky Poem Life

Episode 101: A Little Comma-Raderie is a celebration of National Punctuation Day, which we turned into National Punctuation Week. Shaun, Bill and special guest Kathleen discuss punctuation in poetry, sing a punctuation song, and debate the Oxford comma. It’s scandalous stuff, but don’t take our word for it. Listen! The song at the beginning and end “Punctuation Blues” is by Jonathan Taylor Brittun...

Episode 100: Excess Fowl Who Came to Earth involves a hullabaloo for our podcast’s 100th episode, including special guests Verla Fletcher and Les Kern, a discussion of the town’s Goose Grab and a review of the county police blotter, with poetic emphasis on Rocklahoma and a new version of our state song. It’s exhaustive . . . and highly entertaining. The wonderful Marea Breedlove also filmed a vide...

Episode 99: Haiku Hit-Me Stance takes you on a journey into the world of tai chai, taekwondo, haiku, poetic truths and truths of everyday life. That’s right, dear listeners, this is some heady stuff, short on the wacky this time, but long on the enlightening bliss! Special guest: Master Paul Flaherty.

Episode 98: The Dude Inside of You is about a dude hand poem left in the museum and much dudeness and macaroni, Yankee Doodles, bad singing, and the eternal ponderings of the universal human encased in skin with meat and skeleton.

Episode 97: Fruit of the Unenclosed Land is a collage of broken things, with some fruit and goblins thrown in there, plus some anaphora and assonance and other a-words, such as acorns, along with a defense of pockets. Really, does it matter what we say in this description? Thank you to our fans Nora and Verla for the poem suggestion!

Episode 96: To Ramble About Plundering includes discussion of one of the best poems we have received at the museum in quite some time. Check out Holly Van Auken’s “In Its Time” and then tolerate Bill and Shaun getting into aesthetics, strip malls, Barbie jokes and more.

Episode 95: Barbie's Accumulating Emergencies borrows a phrase from Adrienne Rich, invites a Barbie Manifesto, discusses creativity in the young and rhapsodizes on the importance of creativity and nurturing the fragile growing mind. Yes, we did all that in 30 minutes. Listen and find out. 

Episode 94: Picnicking with the Dead is about cemeteries and poems about cemeteries and fears of being buried alive. Bad jokes from both Shaun and Bill., the Master of Metaphor who gets his appropriate birthday present.  Enjoy!

Episode 93: Tunnels I Have Known begins with a perfectly lovely poem written in cursive on blue paper and left on the NATURE wall in the museum and then becomes something about tunnels of love because Shaun can't get over Bruce Springsteen. Bill poses questions he knows the answers to, and more subtle wacky ensues. Enjoy. 

Episode 92: WWBD delves into the quandary of What Would Burt Do, meaning, in terms of swimming. What would Burt Lancaster of the 1968 film "The Swimmer," based on the sublime story by John Cheever, do in a situation. Or, in other words, what would a group of folks who gathered to celebrate Yevgeny Yevtushenko's birthday in the hamlet of 1,400 people, Locust Grove, Oklahoma, have to say about swimm...

Episode 91: Flirting with Self-Actualization is about travel and maps, floorplans, blueprints and the poetry within all of that mess. It sounds hifalutin’ but it’s just our usual nonsense, profound, but nonsense nonetheless. Enjoy!

Episode 90: One Cylinder Guitar Picker is about Woody Guthrie, the Poet of the People, from Okemah, Oklahoma, whose birthday is July 14. We discuss songwriters who are poets and poets who are poets and Bill masterfully completes some WG quotes, and there's only a tad bit of profanity. Lots of crickets though. Some polk greens, too.

Episode 89: Yelling Expletives For Over an Hour Continuously takes us back to the Police Blotter in our county paper and a trip through memories, poetry, crime, stolen grills and a quarrel about numbers at Cooper's Bridge. ALSO: Special guest Robert Reid from OETA, the man behind Gallery America, talks about the show and his new podcast and plays along impeccably with us.

Episode 88: Summertime is exactly what it sounds like--all things poetic, muddy and salty within the purview of summertime. What is your summer song? What is your summer self? Find it in this episode, while we walk with our tootsie wootsie in the good ole summertime.

Episode 87: Round Barn is about a red round barn, a rondelet or two, singing pigs, electrical outages, the Nelson brothers and guzzling things. Just go with it, folks.

Episode 86: Totally Poetry Tulsa is our second episode with special guest Zhenya Yevtushenko, who talks with us about poets and poetry happenings in Tulsa, just a short lovely drive from our podcast home. He also shares some of his wonderful poetry with us.

Episode 85 boasts a special guest, Zhenya Yevtushenko, the great poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's son, who talks about his dad, reads his poetry, and discusses his  legacy. and his life in Tulsa and points beyond.  The opening music snippet is from Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 based on Yevtushenko's poem "Babi Yar," with Oleg Tsibulko conducting the Russian National Orchestra.

Episode 84: Off the Beaten Path explores the most misunderstood poem in the world, diverges into misunderstood song lyrics, and includes a multitude of poetic ways of seeing what a "path" is and which one you are on.  There's a little bit of wacky to satisfy the "wacky" in our name, of course.

Episode 83: She Seen Gunholes takes us into the wacky world of incident calls reported in our local paper in the POLICE BLOTTER column. Of necessity, the entries are heavy on nouns and verbs and guess what else is . . . poetry. We have found our calling.

Episode 82: Old Bobi the Dog is about the oldest living dog and dogs we have loved, dogs that are suitable for poetry . . . or not. Dogs who hide under trailers. Dogs named Toby Keith. Dogs everywhere. Dog Dog. Arf!

Episode 81: Plague Doctor Rat Taxidermy is precisely what it sounds like, a foray into the world of taxidermy, well, sort of, and literary taxidermy, cool plague doctor rats and all things stuffed or stuffing. ALSO, be sure to enter the Literary Taxidermy Contest and win a free WPL t-shirt! Enjoy!

Episode 80: War Monster steps back to let the Poppy Lady speak. She stands in the museum in the theme area about WAR. Write your war experience haunting you on a red poppy card and offer it to her. We read some of the offerings.

Episode 79: Lizards Will Be Running was originally titled Skinks in May, and it is about skinks and about May and about skinks in May, but it is about so much more, dear listener, so very much more. Enjoy! Opening bird song recorded by Bill Guthrie.

Episode 78: Reba has Pockets may or may not mention Reba McEntire, but it is all about pockets, particularly POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY, and we are quite sure that Reba would stuff a poem in the pocket of one of her pairs of REBA jeans!

Episode 77: Hunt and Peck begins with a wonderful ode to typewriters by Zhenya Yevtushenko and proceeds to give you a bunch of useless information about typewriters. Qwerty Qwerty Qwerty . . . Guffaw! Guffaw! Guffaw!