K: Ted Kooser

    Ted Kooser is an awesome contemporary American poet. He was born in Ames, Iowa on April 25, 1939 and his writing, to me, very much reflects the clarity and purpose of his generation.  I find it odd that he was an insurance executive for years apparently while refining and developing his writing skills but that only gives hope to all of us who write at night while we work our day jobs.  He earned an undergraduate degree from Iowa State University and then an MA from University of Nebraska. He served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2004 - 2006 and has been published in a wide assortment of publications.  He has also written twelve full length collections of poetry.  

  His book The Poetry Home Repair Manual is an engaging and useful tool for the wannabe poet (like me).

 Here are two samples of Ted Kooser's work.  I can't say what it is that appeals to me so much about these two poems.  I suppose the shared theme of aging draws me to them as that is on my mind.  I wonder what your impressions are?

A Room in the Past

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill

with a morning light so bright

you can’t see beyond its windows

into the afternoon. A kitchen

falling through time with its things

in their places, the dishes jingling

up in the cupboard, the bucket

of drinking water rippled as if

a truck had just gone past, but that truck

was thirty years. No one’s at home

in this room. Its counter is wiped,

and the dishrag hangs from its nail,

a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,

blue aprons of rain, my grandmother

moved through this life like a ghost,

and when she had finished her years,

she put them all back in their places

and wiped out the sink, turning her back

on the rest of us, forever.

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.