Showing posts with label Curly Shingles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Curly Shingles. Show all posts

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Small Business Profile: Personalized Poem Service in Downtown Portland

Nearly two years ago, P&PC remembered the entrepreneurial efforts of minister and poet Carl Wilson—a.k.a. Tramp Star and Curly Shingles—who advertised "Poetry for Sale" on a sign outside his Indiana home in the first half of the twentieth century.

Who would've thought that Wilson's spirit is still alive? And not in southern Indiana, where some folks still like to spell potato with an "e," but at the Saturday Market in Portland, Oregon, where the potatoes are organic and the more "e's" you can fit in the locals' favorite color "greeeen" the better?

It's not just the potatoes—or berries, or fruit, or salmon—that are locally sourced in Stumptown, however. As the fetching, retro-style "Personalized Poems" outfit pictured to the left suggests, even the poems are made locally. Complete with a menu ranging from a $1.00 haiku to a $5.00 slam poem and performance, this mobile, briefcase- sized start-up may not be making any IPO's soon, but it's got our vote for best new business in town.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Poetry for Sale

In writing about the culture of tipping surrounding 19th century carriers' addresses, I was reminded of this photo of "Poetry for Sale" that I snagged off of eBay some time back. I didn't win the auction, but did find that "Curly Shingles" and "Tramp Star" were pseudonyms for Methodist minister Carl Wilson of Brown County Indiana. In 1941, Tramp Starr wrote what is now his most noted work—a volume titled "Population 359" which is set in the town of Milan, Indiana, home to the Milan High School basketball team of the 1986 movie Hoosiers.