Ted Kooser

New books on writing poetry. Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. Books read.

How to write specific forms: Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka. Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát. Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Adam Zagajewski. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise. Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Corey Marks. Franz Wright. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet. Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jorie Graham. Karen Braucher. Kay Ryan. Laureate Poets: Britain; USA. Len Anderson. Li Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A). Richard Hugo. Robert Bly. Sara Teasdale. Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn. Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

Ted Kooser
Poems. Time Line. Books.

Poems.

Delights and Shadows (2004).

Short, calm, mostly accessible book of 59 poems grouped in 4 sections. The emphases of the four sections are:

1. Someone (implicitly a stranger) observed. Favorites include the 10-year-old girl in "Gyroscope", the elders of "The Old People", and the young wheelchair-bound woman in "A Rainy Morning".
2. Family, mainly in the past (parents, grandparents).
3. Age, death, and the past, including "Turkey Vultures" and "Grasshoppers".
4. The poet himself, including "The Early Bird", "The Washing of Hands", and the brilliant "Tectonics".

Many of his metaphors are of the work we used to have to do, such as the equation of fanned vulture wingtips with the smoothing of a tissue-paper sewing pattern ("Turkey Vultures") and the equation (through the amazing verb 'tinkering' and a bold abstraction) of the noise of grasshoppers and a farmer's much-needed rain ("Grasshoppers"):

"This year they are exactly the size of the pencil stub my grandfather kept to mark off the days since rain, ... past the empty barn, the empty silo, you hear them tinkering with irony, slapping the grass like drops of rain."

Data:

• Four sections, each named with the title of its first poem.
• Number of stanzas:
  • Most (43) are written in a single stanza.
  • 6 poems in 2-line stanzas.
  • 2 poems in 3-line stanzas.
  • 1 poem in 4-line stanzas.
  • 1 poem in 5-line stanzas.
  • 1 poem in 6-line stanzas.
  • 1 poem in 7-line stanzas.
  • 1 poem in 12-line stanzas.
  • 3 poems in long or irregular-length stanza.
  • 1 four-part poem
• 7 poems need more than one page.
• In the first half of the book, the single-stanza poems range from 4 to 38 lines, with a median of 15 lines.
• Acknowledges first publications in:
  • Acre
  • The Atlantic Monthly
  • Blink
  • The Chattahoochee Review
  • Connecticut Review
  • Field
  • Flyway
  • The Georgia Review
  • Great River Review
  • The Kenyon Review
  • Laurel Review
  • Margie
  • Metre
  • Nebraska Poets Calendar
  • North Dakota Quarterly
  • Northwest Florida Review
  • The Ohio Review
  • Plainsong
  • Poetry
  • Prairie Schooner
  • River Styx
  • Rosebud
  • Shenandoah
  • Solo
  • Southern Poetry Review
  • The Southern Review
  • Spirituality and Health
  • Third Coast
  • West Branch

Time Line.

2004.

Poetry: Delights and Shadows.

2005.

Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Books.

Links and Books.

• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of Britain
• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of the U.S.A.
• Best Poems by the Best Poets - Some Lists of Winners.
• Other Books of Poetry Form.

Related pages: Books of Poetry Form. Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics. Poetry Home-Sweet-Home. How to Write Poetry.

[Thanks for visiting.]

Copyright © 2006 by J. Zimmerman, except for the quoted poems. All rights reserved.