ARCHIVE SERENDIPITIES

Archive Serendipities is an Oklahoma literary history blog written by Cullen Whisenhunt & Jeanetta Calhoun Mish.

Below is an excerpt from their post, “Oklahoma Poetry, 1900-1940, by the Numbers” by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish.

You can read more of their articles on their Substack linked here.

I thought I’d open this new chapter of Archive Serendipities with a list because it’s difficult to explain to people the depth and breadth of archival materials on Oklahoma literary history, and, for me, primarily, the history of Oklahoma poets and poetry. So, here’s the list—and, at the end of this post, you can download the list as a scissortail-embellished digital and printable handout.

In my next post, I’ll confront the inevitable questions: But is it good poetry? Did it have a wide readership? Why should we care? And, I hope that someone will ask, “If I experience an Oklahoma literary history serendipity, how can I send it to you?”

Oklahoma Poetry History By the Numbers

1st: August 6, 1832—date of the first (so far identified) poem published that was written in the land that became Oklahoma. “On the Death of Levi Pickens” is an elegy written by a cowboy, “Roper,” on the death of his friend and fellow cowboy, Levi Pickens, a Chickasaw tribal member. There is strong evidence that “Roper” (sometimes spelled Raper) was Native as well.

2: Number of Oklahoma dramatists (1900-1940) whose plays were hits in the US and overseas and were made into movies. Lynn Riggs and Mary McDougal Axelson, both poets.

3: Number of Oklahoma towns visited by Harriett Monroe, founder and editor of Poetry Magazine, in 1925: Norman, Chickasha, Durant.

8: Number of movements in Melvin B. Tolson’s Libretto for the Republic of Liberia which he wrote while teaching at Langston University. Make a trip to Guthrie to honor his resting place.

9: Native women poets (they said so) first published from 1900 to 1940: Lena Harnage Adair, Delia Wade Felmet, Winnie Lewis Gravitt, Mary Cordelia Hartshorn, Ruth Muskrat, Juliette Riggs, Anne Semple (state poet laureate!), and Maggie Culver-Fry (state poet laureate & Pulitzer nominee!). These women identified themselves in print as Native. No doubt there’s more.

27: Number of poems that internationally-famous Muna Lee published in Poetry. Her Oklahoma bona fides can be seen in the sonnet series entitled “Mushroom Town,” (boomtown) written about Hugo, Oklahoma where her family moved in 1902 when she was 7. Taught at at Northern Oklahoma College (Tonkawa) and high schools in Sulphur and Lawton. Read “Mushroom Town” at Jonathan Cohen’s website for his biography of Lee, A Pan American Life.

45 + 30 pages: The number of individual poems—45—that one LGBTQ+ Oklahoma writer published in Poetry between 1917 and 1943. 30 pages—an entire issue—was devoted exclusively to their long poem. Glorious high-modernist experimental poetry. (Can’t reveal their name yet.)

100+: National newspapers, literary magazines, popular magazines, and anthologies that published Oklahoma poetry from 1900-1940. (New ones discovered weekly.)

167: Poetry collections in the Department of Library’s Oklahoma Collection written by Okie poets who began publishing before 1940. There are more out in the world (and on our shelves).

792: Number of 1900-1940 published poets listed in our Oklahoma poets spreadsheet. Approximately 2/3 are women.