"like the thin gray scarves
of immigrants
standing in line,
hands in their pockets,
cold fingers
pinching the lint
of their stories"

Thus Ted Kooser interweaves metaphor within metaphor, image within image, in this fine selection of poetry from 20 years of writing. His writing is lucid and simple, but beautiful and evocative. There are no sour notes, no tones of presumption or artificial distancing through obfuscation here.

"The dog gets stiffly up
and limps away, seeking a quiet spot
at the heart of the house. Outside,
in silence, with diamonds in his fur,
the winter night curls round the legs of the trees,
sleepily blinking snowflakes from his lashes."

Mortality hovers over every poem, but its bittersweet knowledge brings forth poetry worth spending time with. ( )

I do like Kooser, ever since I read a sample (about a dozen?) of his works in an anthology.?� Probably a plurality of the poems in this collection do support what some have called him, 'the Robert Frost of the prairie.'?á Nebraska, the Dakotas, dying grandparents, wind, drought, abandoned farmhouses and a church... sounds bleak but really isn't; it's just the way it is out there.?á?á Some poems do explore love, faith, beauty... but Kooser seems perfectly willing to skip entirely verse about flowers, children, other happy things.?á

The poems are accessible to naive readers with incisive observations and captivating metaphors, but read on that level they're a bit forgettable.?á Just interesting.?á I'm trying to pick a few to study in more depth, to see if I can get more out of them.?á I'm sure there is more.?á I might have to read this afresh next year, too.

Again, though, I muse: why do I like it??á I don't like bleak, dark, sad....?á Well, let's see what some particular, semi-random, examples reveal:

Sitting All Evening Alone in the Kitchen

The cat has fallen asleep.,
the dull book of a dead moth
loose in his paws.

The moon in the window, the tide
gurgling out through the broken shells
in the old refrigerator.

Late, I turn out the lights.
The little towns on top of the stove
glow faintly neon,
sad women alone at the bar.

Furnace

There's a click like a piece of chalk
tapping the blackboard, and the furnace
and the furnace starts thinking: Now just where was I?
It's always the same stale thought
turned over and over: Got to
get something to eat.?á Nothing else
ever enters its mind. After all,
it's a very old furnace,
and all of its friends have moved on.

from Late Lights in Minnesota

a five-battery flashlight
pulling an old woman downstairs...

from Sleeping Cat

[when it wakes] the cat will come scampering back
into the blinding, bright rooms of its eyes.

Birthday

Somebody deep in my bones
is lacing his shoes with a hook.
It's an hour before dawn
in that nursing home.
There is nothing to do but get dressed
and sit in the darkness.
Up the hall, in the brightly lit skull, the young pastor is writing his poem.



( )

Kooser writes short, concise poems with fairly straightforward meaning. His work is a good choice for teaching imagery and meter. ( )

These two collections are interesting. Someone described them to me as a reminder of Billy Collins, my favorite poem, and I am afraid I have to disagree. The poems do capture simple moments, and “snap photographs” of images, as Collins does, but there is a little less humor, and a bit less easily flowing language. Furthermore, many of the poems while not depressing, are sad. “Abandoned Farmhouse,” for example, recounts the shades of lives lived in an old house. Several recall moments of remembering at a funeral or a cemetery.

I liked these poems, though; the simplicity of language and ideas was pleasing. One good example is “Daddy Longlegs” from Flying by Night:

Here, on fine long legs springy as steel
a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill
that skims along over the basement floor
wrapped up in a simple obsession.
Eight legs reach out like the master ribs
of a web in which some thought is caught
dead center in its own small world,
a thought so far from the touch of things
that we can only guess at it. If mine,
it would be the secret dream
of walking alone across the floor of my life
with an easy grace, and with love enough
to live on at the center of myself. (108)

Another short poem from the same volume, and which is probably my favorite, is “At the Center”

In Kansas, on top
of an old piano,
a starfish, dry
as a fancy pastry
left sitting there
during a wedding,
spreads its brown arms
over the foam
of a white lace doily,
reaching for water
in five directions. (122)

Most of the poems in Sure Signs can also be found in Flying, so start with that, because it also contains about 40 poems from One World at a Time, including the two I mentioned here. Four stars

--Jim, 12/28/08 ( )

I love Ted Kooser’s poetry. So seemingly simple, yet so complex. ( )