Ted Kooser

Presents a collection of poems that celebrate everyday life.

Poems

Delights & Shadows

Recently appointed as the new U. S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry’s ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.

Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

The Poetry Home Repair Manual

Jon Klassen

Built on a treeless yard by a family who cleared away all the sprouting trees on the property, a house is eventually abandoned and left to deteriorate on a lot that is gradually overrun by wild trees, in a poignant tale of loss, change and nature's quiet triumph by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former U.S. Poet Laureate and author of Delights & Shadows.

House Held Up by Trees

One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison

Winter Morning Walks

Jim Harrison

Jean Follain

Presents brief poems originally exchanged by the longtime friends in their letters to each other, exploring such topics as the natural world, aging, and the nature of poetry.

A Conversation in Poetry

Braided Creek

100 Postcards to Jim Harrison (Poetry Series)

Winter Morning Walks 

When Charlie visits his hardworking grandparents in the summer, he's often left to himself. One day he goes out to play by the stream with a tin can for tadpoles, a special weed-whacking stick, and stones to drop from the iron bridge. He notices that when he strikes the bridge with a big stone, it rings with a bong like a church bell and echoes into the valley. And sometimes a faint, very distant, different-sounding bong comes back.

The Bell in the Bridge

"Four decades of poetry--and a generous selection of new work--make up this collection by Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser. Firmly rooted in the landscapes of the Midwest, Kooser's poetry succeeds in finding the emotional resonances within the ordinary. Kooser's language of quiet intensity trains itself on the intricacies of human relationships, as well as the animals and objects that make up our days. As Poetry magazine said of his work, 'Kooser documents the dignities, habits, and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance""--Amazon.com.

new and selected poems

Kindest regards

"A short, accessible set of prose observations about nature, place, and time, arranged (like Local Wonders) according to the calendar year"--

A Poet's Field Book

The Wheeling Year

Red Stilts

Connie Wanek

Celebrated poets Ted Kooser along with Connie Wanek, and illustrator Richard Jones, explore figures of speech in a spirited and magical way--and invite our imaginations out to play. A freewheeling romp through the world of imagery and metaphor, this quietly startling collection of thirty poems, framed by the four elements, is about art and reality, fact and fancy. Look around: what do you see? A clown balancing a pie in a tree, or an empty nest perched on a leafless branch? As poet Connie Wanek alludes to in her afterword--a lively dialogue with former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser--sometimes the simplest sights and sounds "summon our imaginations" and cry out to be clothed in the alchemical language of poetry. This compendium of the fleeting and unexpected turns the everyday--turtles, trees, and tadpoles; cow pies, lazy afternoons, and pillowy white marshmallows--into poetic gold. A brilliant and timeless collaboration that evokes both the mystery and grandeur of the natural world and the cozy, mundane moments of daily life, this exquisitely illustrated collection is the go-to gift book of the season for poetry fans of all ages.

Two Poets at Play Among Figures of Speech

Marshmallow Clouds

One cold, spring morning, an ordinary grocery bag begins blowing around a landfill, then as it travels down a road, through a stream, and into a town, it is used in various ways by different people, many of whom do not even notice it.

Bag in the Wind

For Valentine?s Day 1986, Ted Kooser wrote ?Pocket Poem? and sent the tender, thoughtful composition to fifty women friends, starting an annual tradition that would persist for the next twenty-one years. Printed on postcards, the poems were mailed to a list of recipients that eventually grew to more than 2,500 women all over the United States. Valentines collects Kooser?s twenty-two years of Valentine?s Day poems, complemented with illustrations by Robert Hanna and a new poem appearing for the first time. ø Kooser?s valentine poems encompass all the facets of the holiday: the traditional hearts and candy, the brilliance and purity of love, the quiet beauty of friendship, and the bittersweetness of longing. Some of the poems use the word valentine, others do not, but there is never any doubt as to the purpose of Kooser?s creations.

Valentines

Named U.S. Poet Laureate for 2004-2006, Ted Kooser is one of America's masters of the short metaphorical poem. Dana Gioia has remarked that Kooser has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation. In Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, Kooser has selected poems from two of his earlier works, Sure Signs and One World at a Time (1985). Taken together or read one at a time, these poems clearly show why William Cole, writing in the Saturday Review, called Ted Kooser "a wonderful poet," and why Peter Stitt, writing in the Georgia Review, proclaimed him "a skilled and cunning writer. . . . An authentic 'poet of the American people.'"

Poems 1965-1985

Flying At Night

encouraging words for people who want to start writing

Writing brave and free

Readings, effective as poetry or drama, based on the reminiscences of those who survived the great Blizzard of 1888.

The Blizzard Voices

Academy of American Poets

American Poetry & Literacy Project

Collects seventy poems that will interest younger readers on a variety of subjects, including works by Shel Silverstein, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost.

A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young Readers

How to Eat a Poem

"The poems in Cotton Candy were written during Ted Kooser's daily routine of getting up long before dawn and writing down whatever drifts into his mind"--

Poems Dipped Out of the Air

Cotton Candy

Ted Kooser lives and writes on 62 acres of wooded hills and pasture in rural Nebraska with his wife, Kathleen. Ted served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate and his 2004 collection of poems, Delights & Shadows, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

A Man with a Rake

Provides instructions on writing and revising poems.

Ted Kooser

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