Ted Kooser

Big Frank bought his first book of Ted Kooser poetry 33 years ago: Grass Country. It was partly the title (both Big Frank and Kooser are plains people); and the poetry inside sealed it. Ted Kooser went on to become US Poet Laureate (2004 – 2006). He writes a weekly column for online publications and newspapers in which he presents one poem in an attempt to bring poetry to the general reader. You can read that column here.

Kooser wrote a poem included below that seems to place the reader with the writer poised between beginnings and endings. The beauty of the position is startling (the exploding constellations below and the melting of stars in the ocean of space above:




FLYING AT NIGHT
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
—from Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985



The following poem will stab you as surely as the tatooed image at the heart of this poem:

TATTOO
What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.
-- from Delights & Shadows



Finally a poem from Kooser's most recent book: Valentines. Over a period of many years Kooser would on Valentine's day put a poem on postcards and mail them. These poems are a kind of sad wooing from afar. So Ted and I will put this one in the Spokane River and watch it flow down into the Columbia and then . . . :



THIS PAPER BOAT

Carefully placed upon the future,
it tips from the breeze and skims away,
frail thing of words, this valentine,
so far to sail. And if you find it
caught in the reeds, its message blurred,
the thought that you are holding it
a moment is enought for me.
-- from Valentines