Awards
2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in PoetryTed Kooser, who served as United States Poet Laureate (20042006), is a poet who works toward clarity and accessibility, so that each distinctive poem appears to be as fresh and bright and spontaneous as a good watercolor painting. He is a haiku-like imagist who imbues his poems with "tender wisdom,” and draws inspiration from the overlooked details of daily life.
Praise for Delights and Shadows:
"Ted Kooser...has a genius for making the ordinary sacred."The New York Times
"A sense of wonder and compassion runs through this Pulitzer Prize winning volume
Kooser's poetry is understated yet manages to skillfully illuminate the small moments of life."Christian Science Monitor
"[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
"There is a sense of quiet amazement at the core of all Kooser's work, but it especially seems to animate his new collection of poems, Delights and Shadows. Every delight is shadowed by darkness in this book of small wonders and hard dualisms."Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post
"Delights and Shadows is a book with a deep stillness at its center, perfectly self-contained."Carol Muske-Dukes, Los Angeles Times
"Kooser's ninth collection of poems reflects the simple and remarkable things of everyday life. That he often sees things we do not would be delight enough, but more amazing is exactly what he sees. Nothing escapes him; everything is illuminated
.Highly recommended."Library Journal
"Few poets depict the Midwest so accurately or with such tender regard... Kooser excels at the brief, imagistic poem."The Kansas City Star
"Delights and 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... This is not an extended, complex or experimental kind of writing, but poetry that rings true, allowing the human sound of being to exist on the page."Bloomsbury Review
"Here is the gift and fragility of life."The Wichita Eagle
"Kooser is a master of the subjective description. Empathetic without sentimentality, his eye ranges over all sorts of everyday subjects and finds material everywhere
wherever the unpredictable particularity of the world can be glimpsed
Perhaps Koosers success lies in his determination to see the
things of this world with such clarity and passion that their underlying mysteries, delights, and shadows also become clear, if only for a moment."The Georgia Review
"You can almost see Kooser behind the poems, watching the world like a sketch artist
Kooser displays the same kind of fluid strokes Degas used in his ballet pictures...He is an exquisite miniaturist of daily life."The Hartford Courant
"The poet finds magic in activities and objects typically considered mundane... Metaphors are the treasure of these short, imagistic poems, emphasizing the wonder and delight latent in what is often merely taken for granted."Harvard Review
"Kooser has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation." Dana Gioia
"Kooser is straightforward, possesses an American essence, is humble, gritty, ironic and has a gift for detail and a deceptive simplicity."Seattle Post-Intelligencer
As Poet Laureate of the United States, Ted Kooser launched the weekly poetry column "American Life in Poetry," which appears in over 100 newspapers nationwide. He is the author of ten books of poems, including the collaboration with Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (isbn 9781556591877).
Review
"Kooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance." Poetry
Review
"Though he focuses as often as [Wendell] Berry on memories, Kooser is less historically and more personally conscious....And Berry has come up with no finer metaphor than that of Kooser's 'Memory,' in which recall is a benignly ruthless tornado." Booklist
Review
"There is much to celebrate in these small-town poems about small-town people and a reminder to all of us how America's voice and warm wisdom resonate from the middle. Highly recommended." Library Journal
Synopsis
Kooser connects disparate elements of daily life to reveal the remarkable in what was before an ordinary world.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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.
"Kooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance."-Poetry
Ted Kooser is the author of eight collections of poems and a prose memoir. He lives on a small farm in rural Nebraska.
Synopsis
Poetry. In these poems, Kooser draws inspiration from overlooked details and quotidian objects, documenting "the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance"--Poetry Magazine. Deftly connecting the disparate elements of the world and communicating with absolute precision, Kooser helps to reveal the remarkable in what before was a merely ordinary world. Critics call him a "haiku-like imagist" and compare his poems to Chekov's short stories, and some would argue that he "has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation"--Dana Gioia.
Synopsis
"Kooser has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation." -Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter?
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Ted Kooser served as U.S. Poet Laureate and won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for
Delights and ShadowsSynopsis
When watching old men releasing their caged birds at dawn in New York City or a ladder of cranes rising from a field in Manitoba or even willow catkins in Alaska, Sexton is a keen observer of the interconnectedness of the natural and human worlds. Here we meet the wolf of Gubbio when he is old and lame and Li Bai chanting to a Yangtze River dolphin centuries ago, but no matter where he takes us we always come back to the landscape and people of Alaska; to cloudberries in a marsh and a wedding in the village of Ninlichik where he held a crown of gold over the head of the bride. Sexton carefully notes it all in his familiar practice of traditional forms and free verse. The tensions of his formal influences, Chinese and European, force the reader to experience these spare lines and tight observations in new ways.
Synopsis
Whether watching men releasing caged birds at dawn in New York City or a ladder of cranes rising from a field in Manitoba, Tom Sexton is a keen observer of the interconnectedness of the natural and human worlds. The former Alaska poet laureate takes to the road in this new collection, wending a lyrical and at times mystical path between Alaska and New England.
Travelers along the way include the fabled wolf of Gubbio, old and lame and long past his taming encounter with Saint Francis of Assisi, and Chinese poet Li Bai chanting to a Yangtze River dolphin. Yet, while Sextons journey crosses bordersand occasionally centurieshis ultimate destination is always the landscape and people of Alaska. A Ladder of Cranes showcases Sextons mastery of both traditional forms and free verse. The tensions of his formal influences, Chinese and European, force the reader to experience these spare lines and tight observations in stunning new ways.
About the Author
Ted Kooser is the author of eight collections of poems and a prose memoir. He lives on a small farm in rural Nebraska.
Table of Contents
I. Walking on Tiptoe
Walking on Tiptoe 5
Tattoo 6
At the Cancer Clinic 7
Student 8
Gyroscope 9
New Cap 10
Cosmetics Department 11
Biker 12
The Old People 13
In January 14
A Rainy Morning 15
Mourners 16
Skater 17
II. The China Painters
The China Painters 21
Memory 22
Ice Cave 24
Mother 25
A Jar of Buttons 27
Dishwater 28
Depression Glass 29
Zenith 30
The Necktie 31
Applesauce 32
Creamed Corn 34
Flow Blue China 35
Father 36
Pearl 37
Old Cemetery 41
A Winter Morning 42
III. Bank Fishing for Bluegills
Bank Fishing for Bluegills 45
Four Civil War Paintings by Winslow Homer 46
Turkey Vultures 51
Pegboard 52
At the County Museum 53
Casting Reels 55
Horse 56
Praying Hands 57
Lobocraspis griseifusa 58
Home Medical Dictionary 59
In the Hall of Bones 60
A Jacquard Shawl 61
Telescope 62
A Box of Pastels 63
Old Lilacs 64
Grasshoppers 65
The Beaded Purse 66
IV. That Was I
That Was I 71
Screech Owl 73
A Spiral Notebook 74
The Early Bird 75
Starlight 76
On the Road 77
A Washing of Hands 78
After Years 79
Garage Sale 80
Surviving 81
A Glimpse of the Eternal 82
Tectonics 83
A Happy Birthday 84
About the Author 87