Oklahoma

In 1923, Oklahoma established a state poet laureate position, which is presently held by Jay Snider. Snider was appointed in 2022 and will serve a one-year term.

Type	Title	State
Poetry-Friendly Bookstore	Chapters Bookstore and Gift Store	Oklahoma
Poetry-Friendly Bookstore	Full Circle Bookstore	Oklahoma
Literary Organization	Individual Artists of Oklahoma	Oklahoma
Poetry-Friendly Bookstore	Gardner’s Used Books & Music	Oklahoma
Literary Organization	Norman Arts Council	Oklahoma
Literary Organization	Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry	Oklahoma
Literary Organization	Oklahoma Arts Institute	Oklahoma
Writing Program	Red Earth MFA University of Oklahoma City	Oklahoma
Literary Organization	Oklahoma Center for the Book	Oklahoma
Literary Organization	Poetry Society of Oklahoma	Oklahoma

for Danny Fletcher

Ralph Burns

2000

A man staring at a small lake sees
His father cast light line out over
The willows.  He's forgotten his 
Father has been dead for two years
And the lake is where a blue fog
Rolls, and the sky could be, if it
Were black or blue or white,
The backdrop of all attention.

He wades out to join the father,
Following where the good strikes
Seem to lead.  It's cold.  The shape
Breath takes on a cold day is like
Anything else — a rise on a small lake,
The Oklahoma hills, blue scrub — 
A shape already inside a shape,
Two songs, two breaths on the water.

Ralph Burns

1983

A youngest brother turns seventeen with a click as good as a roar,
finds the door and is gone.
You listen for that small sound, hear a memory.
The air-raid sirens howled of summer tornadoes, the sound

thrown back against the scattered thumbs
of grain silos and the open Oklahoma plains
like the warning wail of insects.
Repudiation is fast like a whirlwind.

Only children don't know that all you live is leaving.
Yes, the first knowledge that counts is that everything stops.
Even in the bible-belt, second comings are promises
you never really believed;

so you turn and walk into the embrac

John Blair

2003

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Oklahoma

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Joy Harjo

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Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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