Images of Route 66 in Oklahoma by Jacky & Mike Smith in 2001

Day 29 Local Color

Carter Revard is an Osage Indian, Rhodes scholar, and professor of medieval English literature. He was born on the Osage reservation in Pawhuska,Oklahoma, and attended a one-room country school through eighth grade. He worked his way through high school as a janitor, farmhand and greyhound trainer. The young man then snared a ticket to higher education by winning a scholarship to the University of Tulsa on a radio quiz show. He took B.A.s from the University of Tulsa and Oxford (Rhodes Scholarship, Oklahoma and Merton 1952), was given his Osage name and a Yale Ph.D., then taught medieval and American Indian literatures before retiring in 1997.

How the Songs Came Down is a collection of Revard's poems. Recordings of ten selections are included on his website, as well as a podcast interview. Exerpts from this collection are available from the publisher and thirteen poems are featured in a Google Books edition.This collection of poems demonstrates his eclectic ability to draw upon his Oklahoma Osage background and his classical Oxford education:

"This major selection of Revard's work lets you hear duets of humpbacked whales and wine-throated hummingbirds. You can walk on Skye, shoot craps in Las Vegas and see an ex-bank-robbing uncle get shot dead hijacking a shipment of bootleg whiskey. You can watch a swan become a soul, see glass fibers bring tomorrow from Japan, taste watermelons transubstantiating, and track vanilla honey to a beehive on top of L'Opera Garnier." (from the publisher)

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	Other Work by Revard Forgotten Ground Regained is a treasury of traditional Anglo-Saxon alliterative and accentual verse, with five verses contributed by Revard. Family Matters, Tribal Affairs is a collection of essays, exploring the influence of his Osage background, focusing on naming. Revard has profound insight into deafness, having lost his own hearing. Three of his poems are featured by Hearing Health, a publication of the Deafness Research Foundation. The American Lives Project includes an extensive audio interview. He has also lectured for the American Embassy in Germany (audio and video files available). The academic journal Studies in American Indian Literature honored him in a Special Issue (Spring 2003, Volume 15, Number 1).

Powerful storms deliver heavy rain and whipping winds to the wide open spaces of the Southern Great Plains. This thunderstorm delayed the winter wheat harvest near the tiny town of Fort Supply. (Photograph by Alan R Moller/Getty Images).

Downtown Oklahoma City from Interstate 40 in the evening. (Photograph by Alan R Moller/Getty Images).

Your Turn: In "Driving in Oklahoma," the speaker observes the Oklahoma landscape as he travels in his car. Observe your own landscape. Begin by making a list of the things you observe. Record specific sensory images -- sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Using this record, write a poem which will capture some part of your own journey. If you have no landscape to inpire you, use one of the photographs above as inspiration.

Listen to Revard read this poem.