Denton Poet Gets Anniversary Gift That Will Last

DENTON, TX. (AP) – Karla K. Morton is such a romantic that she turned down a diamond to make a fictional cluster of gems come to life.

And like the best love stories, Morton’s 20th anniversary present has outlasted a bouquet or a box of chocolates. Blame the poetry in her soul. “He gave me this little anniversary card,” Morton said of her husband, Stan, the chief executive officer at Presbyterian Hospital of Denton.

“It said something like: ‘You know, for our anniversary, I thought I’d get you something sparkly, but then I thought a diamond is as useless as a book/CD.”‘ Karla Morton, a Denton resident and a founding member of the Denton Poets’ Assembly, said she was happy to get the gift. Instead of a tennis bracelet or a ring, Morton took her husband up on his offer to fund the recording of Wee Cowrin’ Timorous Beastie, a book and CD of her original Scottish epic written in rhyme.

Most importantly, the gift would also make it possible to add Celtic music to the disc. Stan Morton said he didn’t remember exactly what he wrote in the card. “But I so trust Karla’s memory, and I trust the way she embellishes things, that, yes, that is probably what I wrote.” When she was in middle school, a teacher was so impressed with her poem about the color white that she pledged to send it to the kid’s magazine Highlights. Morton doesn’t know if it was published, but the poetry bug had bitten.

“Poetry is down to the essence. There is a richness to poetry,” she said. “I can’t remember not writing. I have wanted to get published forever.” Morton continued to write, and graduated with a journalism degree from Texas A&M University. She’s never let go of poetry, because reading and writing it is a way to put more music into her writing. She’s an advocate of the arts locally and sits on the board of the Greater Denton Arts Council.

The inspiration for the epic story of Vashti, a Scotswoman who attracts a dashing pirate named John Murray, began years ago at a dinner table, where a real-life John Murray’s Scottish accent carried to the table where the Denton poet was dining. The Mortons struck up a conversation with the couple from Glasgow. Karla Morton took a shine to the husband, John Murray, and they’ve kept in touch through e-mail.

Morton said she likes how Murray’s accent seems to make it through cyberspace. “One night, at about 10 p.m., I get this e-mail from John, and he says: ‘I’m feeling a bit wee cowrin’ timorous beastie.’ That just caught me. I knew that phrase. Where was it? I went to the old bard himself – Robert Burns. There it was, the opening line. ‘Wee, sleeket, cowran tim’rous beastie.’ It’s the first line of ‘To A Mouse.’ It’s funny. Love is like that. It’s this small thing that rules the world.”

She decided to do a Google search of the name John Murray and found a 13th century Scottish pirate of the same name. Poetry percolated, and when she admired a brooch she’d gotten for Christmas the year before, the story got its talisman. Her poetic pirate would give a bewitched brooch to his beloved, and its strange powers would bring conflict into her tale. Morton said she put pen to paper anytime inspiration struck.

The story unfolded in ballad form, and in rhyme. “This is different. This is unique. This is stories the way they were told 100 years ago,” she said. Publishing the poem was the stumper. “I took my own advice,” she said. “I went to a literary workshop in Oregon.” She met a writer, Gerald Hausman, who told her Wee Cowrin’ wasn’t meant for reading alone. “He said, ‘Have you thought about audio?’ Some stories, some poems, are meant to be heard aloud as well as read,” she said. She needed music.

A bad family reunion in Florida – thanks to a tropical storm and a hurricane – kept the family indoors. She escaped the rain in a small shop when she heard it. The shop had a CD playing by Howard Baer, an award-winning Canadian composer and musician. “I called him to talk about music, and he told me, ‘I want to read it before I do anything.”‘ She e-mailed Baer the story. “I had produced three Celtic albums for a company,” Baer said in an interview from his studio in Weslekoon, a bucolic town near Ontario.

“I was sort of ready to move on. I got this e-mail from Karla, who was independently looking for something. The first thing I wanted to do was to read the poem.” He read it, and his imagination slipped into gear. “I thought, instead of going out and dealing with getting rights, why don’t we just treat every line of this as a scene-story? I told her: ‘This is something that needs to be scored.”‘

The important part of the 20th anniversary was the gift certificate Stan Morton made so that his wife could hire Baer to score her recording. Stan Morton decided to pay for the composing after Baer began talking about it. “When he started working on an original score,” Stan Morton said, “I thought: ‘Well, that’s an awful big project.’ But the more they talked about it and I saw her get more and more excited about it, we had this 20th anniversary coming up. I wanted to get something that would be sort of keepsake for that.”

Karla Morton doesn’t think the recording will make her rich and famous, but she’s proud of the work, she said. “It’s also given me the confidence to do bigger and better things,” she said. Like love stories, the ending has been something of a beginning. “I will not be satisfied with this piece until we are able to put this on stage for people to hear,” Baer said.

“To go the next step, I’m going to have to find the interested supporters. We’ve always talked about the live presentation involving Karla reading, full orchestra with Celtic musicians. I’m just very excited about it, but we need support for that.”

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)