Posted on: Sunday, April 10, 2005
Poet finds order, discovery in verse
By Craig Wilson
USA Today
Ted Kooser, a former insurance executive who has written 10 collections of poetry, is the USA's latest poet laureate — and the first from the Great Plains. To celebrate National Poetry Month, Craig Wilson chatted with him from his farm outside Garland, Neb. (pop: 247).
Ted Kirk • Lincoln Journal Star via Associated Press A. I have a small building full of books, with windows overlooking a pond. I do write out there sometimes, but I have a comfortable chair in the house, too.
Q. Do you have animals on your farm?
A. We used to have chickens, but ... chickens lose their glamour rather quickly. Q. Some call your poetry a poetry of empty spaces. A modest, stubborn kind of poetry.
A. It's very difficult for me to imagine another person's reading of my work. ... I have never lived anywhere but Iowa and Nebraska. But if you look at my poems one by one, you'll find lots of them that could have been written anywhere, in cities, in empty places. Q. So, why a poet? Why not an essayist? Or a novelist?
A. I do like writing essays as well. But you know, I tend to be on the obsessive/compulsive side, and a poem, when put together well, it's a perfect piece of order. Every punctuation mark is in its place, every word is the exact word. Q. What inspires you? What becomes a poem? Something you see out your window?
A. I think all poems are records of discovery of one kind or another. It's something I discover outside or a memory or fooling around with language. ... And the poem becomes a record of that discovery. Then I present it to you, in hopes you'll discover something as well. Q. Who shows up at your poetry readings? Do you have groupies?
A. Well, no, I don't. I have a number of people my age, 65, and I have students. It's a pretty eclectic audience. And I do enjoy them, although I've always thought the best way of reading poetry is privately, out of a book, on your terms.
Q. What have you done to further poetry since you're appointment as poet laureate?
A. I am finishing up details on a weekly newspaper column that will be offered free to any paper that wishes to use it. In it, I'll feature a short, accessible poem by one of my contemporaries, with a short introduction. We anticipate getting in front of hundreds of thousands of readers via a Web site (www.americanlifeinpoetry.org). I've also been out speaking. It's a full time-job, or so I'm treating it. Q. How do you get people involved, excited about poetry?
A. It is important to show them that poems aren't something a person has to be afraid of. ... People need to understand that a poem is another experience and that it can be seen and used as such. There is no right way to read a poem, even though our teachers may have led us to believe that.
Q. Someone told us you write in a shack behind the house.
Poet laureate Ted Kooser, 65, a professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a retired insurance executive, has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for "Delights and Shadows."
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| Poets unite for April events
By John Wihbey
• A marathon reading of "Leaves of Grass" and dramatic recitations of "Oh Captain, My Captain" will be among highlights of a Whitman festival through May in Washington, D.C., where the poet once lived. Information: washingtonart.com. • The Academy of American Poets is launching an online Poetry Book Club in early April with the hope of starting more poetry reading groups nationwide; www.poets.org will include organizational ideas and, initially, a guide to Whitman's poetry. • Readings will be given in 10 cities to mark the 10th anniversary of Poetry Month. Pulitzer Prize winner Maxine Kumin will read in Seattle on April 11; the venerable nature poet and Beat associate Gary Snyder will be in Minneapolis on April 19. Information: www.poets.org. "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 bar back into the little system of his care. All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his. "Flying at Night" is from the book "Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985," by Ted Kooser, copyright 1980, 1985. Reprinted by permission of theUniversity of Pittsburgh Press. |
