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It's my great delight and stolen privilege as the person starting this poetry corner thing to start off with my favorite poet above all others, that of:
Ted Kooser

About the Book
The book this month, Delights & Shadows
was published in 2004, and in 2005 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

About the Poet
Biography
[edit] Life

Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, Kooser earned a BS at Iowa State University in 1962 and the MA at the University of Nebraska in 1968. He is the author of twelve collections of poetry. He is former vice-president of Lincoln Benefit Life, an insurance company, and lives on land near the village of Garland, Nebraska. He owned a book publishing company, Windflower. He teaches as a Visiting Professor in the English department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is married to Kathleen Rutledge, former editor of the Lincoln Journal Star.
[edit] Career

On August 12, 2004, he was named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Librarian of Congress to serve a term from October 2004 through May 2005. In April 2005, Ted Kooser was appointed to serve a second term as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. During that same week Kooser received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book "Delights and Shadows" (Copper Canyon Press, 2004).

Kooser lives in Garland, Nebraska, and much of his work focuses on the Great Plains. Like Wallace Stevens, Kooser spent much of his working years as an executive in the insurance industry, although Kooser sardonically noted in an interview with the Washington Post that Stevens had far more time to write at work than he ever did. Kooser has won two NEA Literary Fellowships (in 1976 and 1984), the Pushcart Prize, the Nebraska Book Awards for Poetry (2001) and Nonfiction (2004), the Stanley Kunitz Prize (1984), the James Boatwright Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2005).

He hosts the newspaper project "American Life in Poetry."

Ted Kooser is one one my favourite poets. I will enjoy reading these poems (and commenting accordingly!) Thank you for a wise first choice: a good poet and an accessible one.

What a wonderful-and somewhat unexpected-choice. I love Kooser. I am loving this new thread.

During a long car trip to a working weekend early Friday morning, I related the poetry corner start to my longtime friend and colleague (who is also a member of this group) and it took him about 10 seconds to guess what poet/book I had chosen first, so knowing me personally clearly reduces the surprise of my initial pick.

I apologise for absence but the book only arrived on Thursday. So far, I am really enjoying this book. It's really accessible and the poems are wonderful. I really love 'A rainy morning'. What's your favourite poem of the collection?

Well I think my all-time fav of his is also in this book, "After Years", which I featured as the first poem in the april featured poems:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...
But I'll have to think about some other ones. I already know what poem of his I want to finish the month with, but I've got some poetry books I need to write review(s) for before I can sit down with these old friends.

Whilst I have long since enjoyed much of Ted Kooser's poetry I think this is the first time I've read an entire volume of his work.

I found the subdivision into headings particularly apposite. II THE CHINA PAINTERS contained the poem Father, which I found very moving. Indeed, a lot of these poems hit a raw nerve. The lines ‘� “Pearl,/it's Ted. Its Vera's boy," and my voice broke,/for it came to me, nearly sixty, I was still/my mother's boy, that boy for the rest of my life� had me in tears.

Section III BANK FISHING FOR BLUEGILLS includes a series, Four Civil War Paintings by Winslow Homer and I particularly enjoyed the first one, Sharpshooter and the observation that 'Some part of art is the art/of waiting � the chord/behind the tight fence/of a musical staff,/the sonnet in a book.�

Some of the work is less successful. Whilst Turkey Vultures is accomplished ('� It is as if they are smoothing/one of those tissue-paper sewing patterns/over the pale blue fabric of the air�) I didn't feel the imagery was particularly pertinent. And Praying Hands strikes me as missing the mark, altogether. I can't, for the life of me associate faith going from door to door with a butterfly pressing its wings, as it rests between flowers.

I agree with Will, that the best poem in this fine collection of beautifully observed gentle moments is After Years.

Funnily enough, just your quote from "Praying Hands" works for me. Butterflies open and close their wings while setting on a flower, like a person pressing their hands together in prayer, and each house in a door to door trip like a little flower, hoping for the nectar of acceptance, and perhaps pollinating the pistil of faith.

But that's the amazing beauty of discussion, because I'm not sure I ever really thought closely about that specific poem until you brought it up. That's why it's so important for everybody to discuss things, both in agreement and dissent. We can all learn so much from both.

I think my problem is that the metaphor (praying hands and faith) collapses and falls apart. Faith, in my experience does not go "from door to door,/cast out of one and welcomed at another." However, Praying Hands going from thrift shop to thrift shop do. Perhaps Kooser should have skipped faith and gone straight to butterfly!

Yes, a butterfly does press its wings together, like hands praying and it does go from door to door, but is it ever 'cast out�? It may find a flower wanting before it moves on to another, but I don't think that's quite the same as being cast out�

For me the analogies pull apart and hence the poem doesn't work. But that's only my opinion!

I'm just now getting around to reading this collection. I adore it! I'm off to purchase my very own copy today.
Wow! Thanks for the introduction!

I love his sounds - the slap of the screen door, the jingling stacks of rose-pink dishes - beautiful!

I have few heroes in this life, and can list them quite easily:
J.S. Bach, Gustav Mahler, Ruth Stout, Shelby Foote, and Ted Kooser. I could not speak higher without weeping. He's the only person I'd like to meet.

Will wrote: "I have few heroes in this life, and can list them quite easily:
J.S. Bach, Gustav Mahler, Ruth Stout, Shelby Foote, and Ted Kooser. I could not speak higher without weeping. He's the only person I'..."

I understand, completely. Looking forward to getting to know him better.