Hope, Incorporated: Welborn Hope as B.A. Botkin's "Promising" Oklahoma Poet

Authors

• Cullen Whisenhunt, Eastern Oklahoma State CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In 1927, a letter by then-professor at the University of Oklahoma, Roy Temple House, was published in the Ada Evening News complimenting Ada, OK, poet Welborn Hope and suggesting Hope get in touch with folklorist and literary scholar BA Botkin, also an OU faculty member. That same year, Botkin published “Oklahoma Poets, Inc.,” in which he detailed what he believed to be the three stages of a state’s literary development: the pioneer stage, the popular rhymesters stage, and finally, the union of art and life (30-31). In 1935, Botkin presented a lecture in Tulsa in which he cited Hope among a handful of “promising” writers in Oklahoma. What Botkin saw in Hope, perhaps, was the manifestation of his theory, and nearly a half-century later, Hope would publish the first in a trilogy of epic poems that would prove that “perhaps” true.

This paper argues that the poetry in Hope’s trilogy—The Prairie Ocean: An Epic Poem of the Santa Fe Trail (1982), Beside the Chisholm Trail (1983), and Custer’s Reward (1989, posth.)—individually and collectively showcase Botkin’s three stages of literary development. Methodology includes the contextualization of both Hope and Botkin in Oklahoma’s then-developing literary scene, followed by analysis of selections from each of Hope’s epics according to Botkin’s descriptions of his stages. This paper is an effort in recovery of influential writer/academics who played prominent roles in the development of the body of Oklahoma's state literature.

Recommended Citation

Whisenhunt, Cullen (2026) "Hope, Incorporated: Welborn Hope as B.A. Botkin's "Promising" Oklahoma Poet," Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 2.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dialogue/vol13/iss1/2