|
A Plains poet that’s plain spoken |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Written by Andra Coberly
|
|
Wednesday, 19 September 2007 |
|
|
|
|
 “If you pitch a few horseshoes a day, you can get pretty good at it.”
Ted Kooser is plain-spoken and unassuming. It’s his calling card.
Which isn’t surprising, unless you know that Kooser is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Surely, few other literati would compare the art and skill of crafting a tight, metaphor-laced poem to pitching horseshoes.
But Kooser’s a poet who can create a perfect picture using the simplest of words in the shortest of sentences describing ordinary happenings and people.
His words are much like a charcoal drawing—each smooth line uncomplicated, but when connected, the dark scratches create a perfectly beautiful picture.
She was all in black but for a yellow pony tail
that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves
that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,
as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen
top of the world.
—Skater.
Kooser was born in Iowa in 1939 and attended college at Iowa State and University of Nebraska. He spent most of his life in the insurance business, retiring as the vice president for Lincoln Benefit Life. A poet since his early teens and a published writer since 16, Kooser has published over the years more than 10 books of poetry and literary non-fiction. He’s worked and continues to work as a professor of English at University of Nebraska.
And in 2004, he was named the U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress. The next year, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book Delights & Shadows.
“He was perceived, I think it’s fair to say, as a sudden ascendancy,” wrote New York Times book-reviewer Brad Leithauser, who describes Kooser’s book Flying at Night as “good, honest work.”
Leithauser and others, while noting the poet’s love for “plain facts plainly stated,” point out how Kooser’s roots play a major role in his writing. He is the first U.S. Poet Laureate in history from a Great Plains state. And his compiled works creates a portrait of the Midwest that is both barren and lovely.
Kooser’s focus on the land that has more cattle than people and more wind than anything else is much more simple than others would attempt to make it. Really, for Kooser—a man who lives 20 miles outside of Lincoln, Neb., on 62-acres of rolling prairie next to a little pond—everything is much more simple.
In an e-mail interview with Fort Collins Now, a sister paper of NEXTnc, Kooser replies in one sentence to a question about being the first Great Plains Poet Laureate and on how being raised in the Midwest has impacted his work.
“Beginning writers are told to write about what they know, and the Great Plains and Midwest is really all I know,” he wrote.
Kooser’s honest and straight-forward approach to writing—even in e-mail interviews—is what has made the man a “poet of the people” figure. While reigning as Poet Laureate between 2004 and 2006, Kooser started “American Life in Poetry,” a free newspaper column that features a poem and a short description from Kooser. The column is in more than 150 newspapers — potentially touching millions of people. The purpose of “American Life in Poetry” was “to show newspaper readers that poetry can be fun to read and doesn’t necessarily have to be difficult and obscure,” Kooser wrote in a Q&A provided by his publicist. Kooser also brought in songwriter John Prine to the Library of Congress to speak about song writing.
“He’s a conduit of sorts,” wrote Elizabeth Lund, poetry editor of the Christian Science Monitor in an article, “which allows him to reach a wide audience.”
And long before Kooser served as a literary figurehead, he was a love poet. That was the first type of poem he wrote as a teenager, and in the 1980s, Kooser began sending out postcards to his female friends on Valentine’s Day.
“Love and death are the great subjects for poetry, so poets turn to those subjects quite naturally,” Kooser wrote. “I started sending out Valentine poems just for fun, and it eventually evolved into a big annual project.”
Now hundreds of women get a Valentine from Kooser each year. The University of Nebraska Press will publish all of his Valentine’s Day poems in an illustrated edition next spring.
Appealing to the everyman or everywoman is something that Kooser has toiled over. When he worked for the insurance company, he would bring in his poems to let his secretary read. If she didn’t get one, he would revise it.
“I am hoping for a broad general audience, not just an audience of professors, and it helps to be able to show work to somebody who is not a literary sophisticate,” he wrote.
Kooser revises all his work considerably: One 10- or 12-line poem will see up to 40 different revisions before he will let anybody read it. He is currently not sending work out for publication. He said any piece he submitted would get published because of his name; he prefers to only have published work that is better than what is already in print.
Of his own work, he wrote, “I hope that it’s gotten better. I have felt that the gap between my life and my poems has gotten narrower, and that my work is more true to the person I am.”
———
TO GO
• Poetry at the Rialto: Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
• 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 22
• Rialto Theater, 228 E. 4th St.,Loveland.
• $15 for adults; $10 students/children.
• Call 962.2410 or go online to www.cityofloveland.org | Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
|
|  | "Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth." | |
|  | We're not that bright, even though in our own little world, we're geniuses. We like 80s hair bands and one-hit wonders, but among us we have respectable tastes, too. Metallica, Iron Maiden, U2. Pursuit of all things trivial is a lifestyle, not just a game. We like some sports, love other sports, and can find something to say about anything. We watch TV and movies and we've read a book or two, even a few classics (Yes, Classic Comics count!)
We call it insight, you call it what you will. | |
|  | Felix Wong is an outdoor enthusiast living in Fort Collins. A mechanical engineer by day, he is especially passionate about bicycling, running, and backpacking. | |
|  | Hola Amigos! I'm Sandra. I like to believe that people are 70 percent good and 30 percent dumb. I'm stickin to that story. Reading this blog might make you want to be good, but probably just dumb. | |
|  | Donovan Henderson is editor of NEXTnc. | |
|  | Here at Nextnc we have some characters. Get a sneak peak behind the curtain and find out what amusing antics our staffers get themselves into on a weekly basis. | |
|  | What is up FoCo?
I am a recent college graduate of Minnesota State University Moorhead. After recieving my B.A. in English and Mass Communications this past August I moved down to Colorado.
I enjoy long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners, and heavy metal. My hobbies include reading and writing, music, movies, and getting drunk. Some of my favorite contemporary authors include Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Kurt Vonnegut. My top movies are anything directed by Kubrick. I enjoy listening to anything that rocks.
Right now I am just trying to get to know Colorado and FoCo better. Mostly in order to find the best drink specials on each day that ends in Y. So if you know where I can get a cheap drunk on, let me know!
--Drew | |
|  | Life's little morsels of inspiration, observation and encouragement seen through the eyes of the Nextnc reporter.
| |
|  | Ms. Giles currently lives in Colorado where she stars in her own private reality show. She writes aphoristic accounts of her life, taken completely out of context, and embellished with characters and situations disguised to resemble something close to interesting. | |
|  | over and out | |
| | My name is Michelle Turley and I'm 28 years old. I live in Severance with my hubbie, Brandon. We have 2 dogs and a cat. We enjoy camping, four-wheeling, and just being in the mountains. I like to cook, clean (go figure), flea market, and play poker. I have so much to say about poker... | |
|
|
