Ted Kooser – författare

Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska, an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention, including memories of his grandmother’s cooking. Kooser also reminds us that the closing of local schools, thoughtless county weed control, and irresponsible housing development destroy more than just the view.

What makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood.

This writer sees the extraordinary within the ordinary, the deep beneath the shallow, and the abiding wisdom in the pithy Bohemian proverbs that are woven into his essays.

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

“Kooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance.”—Poetry

"[Kooser] brushes poems over ordinary objects, revealing metaphysical themes that way an investigator dusts for fingerprints. His language is so controlled and convincing that one can''t help but feel significant truths behind his lines." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Delights & Shadows raises the voice of the poet above everything else. Each short, vivid poem on the page reads as if it were being spoken aloud. Details about cemeteries, dictionaries, a doctor''s waiting room, and a jar of buttons bristle with sound and awareness. Kooser''s ability to use brief lyrics to compose a music of discovery and regeneration makes his work radiant and consuming." —Bloomsbury Review

Ted Kooser is a master of metaphor, a poet who deftly connects disparate elements of the world and communicates with absolute precision. Critics call him a “haiku-like imagist” and his poems have been compared to Chekov’s short stories. In Delights and Shadows, Kooser draws inspiration from the overlooked details of daily life. Quotidian objects like a pegboard, creamed corn and a forgotten salesman’s trophy help reveal the remarkable in what before was a merely ordinary world.

Ted Kooser is the author of eight collections of poems and a prose memoir. He lives on a small farm in rural Nebraska.

"Ted Kooser must be the most accessible and enjoyable major poet in America. His lines are so clear and simple."—Michael Dirda,The Washington Post

“Readers [of Splitting an Order] will find ‘characters’ both strange and wonderful, animal or human. There is a sense that time is passing quickly and that everything worthy must be captured and savored, from an old couple lovingly sharing a sandwich to another sowing seed potatoes to a tribute to an old dog who waits as age and winter approach… Master of the single-metaphor poem, Kooser offers images that evolve, fluid and unforced.”—Library Journal, starred review

"Wisdom, compassion, and dignity continue to mark the poetry of Ted Kooser...Splitting an Order [is] a quiet collection that honors small victories and gives reasons to be hopeful."—Elizabeth Lund, The Christian Science Monitor

"Kooser''s ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift."—Bloomsbury Review

Pulitzer Prize winner and best selling poet Ted Kooser calls attention to the intimacies of life through commonplace objects and occurrences: an elderly couple sharing a sandwich is a study in transcendent love, while a tattered packet of spinach seeds calls forth innate human potential. This long-awaited collection from the former U.S. Poet Laureate—ten years in the making—is rich with quiet and profound magnificence.

From "Splitting an Order":

I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half… and then to see him lift halfonto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,and then to wait, offering the plate to his wifewhile she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,her knife and her fork in their proper places,then smoothes the starched white napkin over her kneesand meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.

Ted Kooser is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press), which won the Pulitzer Prize. A former US Poet Laureate, Kooser serves as editor for "American Life in Poetry," a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column.

“Kooser . . . must be the most accessible and enjoyable major poet in America. His lines are so clear and simple.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“Nothing escapes him; everything is illuminated.” —Library Journal

“Will one day rank alongside of Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams.” —Minneapolis Tribune

“Kooser’s ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift.” —The Bloomsbury Review

Four decades of poetry—and a generous selection of new work—make up this extraordinary 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.”

From “March 2”:

Patchy clouds and windy.All morningour house has been flashing in and out of shadelike a signal, and far across the waves of grassa neighbor’s house has answered,offering help.

Ted Kooser is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Delights & Shadows, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and is a visiting professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published. These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately exchanged between two friends… This slim volume acts as a palate-cleanser, a spirit-booster, a little rocket-ship of wonders.”

While Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison were an unlikely pair to become friends, they shared an intimate correspondence of handwritten letters that often included new poems. After Kooser was diagnosed with cancer, Harrison sensed his friend’s poetry becoming “overwhelmingly vivid,” and their friendship deepened through the exchange of brief poems that captured “the essence of what [they] wanted to say to each other.” After hundreds of poems were sent back and forth through the mail, they found this volume hidden within the stacks of envelopes and postcards.

In her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published. These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately exchanged between two friends… This slim volume acts as a palate-cleanser, a spirit-booster, a little rocket-ship of wonders.”

Wise, wry, and penetrating, these epigrammatic, aphoristic poems explore love and friendship, pausing to celebrate the natural world, aging, everyday things and scenes, and poetry itself. This expanded edition includes a dozen new poems, and when asked why none of the poems have attributions, one of the co-authors replied, “This book is an assertion in favor of poetry and against credentials.”

Delightfully universal, Raft by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ted Kooser travels the Midwest landscape, attuned to life’s shared experiences and emotions—illness, aging, beauty, and love.