"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Friday, October 21, 2011

Repost: The Myth That Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare

The Shakespeare Shakedown
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/16/film-anonymous-doubts-shakespeare.html




The new film ‘Anonymous’ says the Bard was a fraud. Don’t buy it.

Roland Emmerich’s inadvertently comic new movie, Anonymous, purports to announce to the world that the works we deluded souls imagine to have been written by one William Shakespeare were actually penned by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. James Shapiro’s fine book Contested Will chronicles the long obsession with depriving Shakespeare of authentic authorship of his works, mostly on the grounds that no manuscripts survive but also that his cultural provenance was too lowly, and his education too rudimentary, to have allowed him to penetrate the minds of kings and courtiers. Only someone from the upper crust, widely traveled and educated at the highest level, this argument runs, could have had the intellectual wherewithal to have created, say, Julius Caesar.

Alternative candidates for the "real" Shakespeare have numbered the Cambridge-schooled Christopher Marlowe (who also happens to have been killed before the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays appeared) and the philosopher--statesman Francis Bacon. But the hottest candidate for some time has been the Earl of Oxford, himself a patron of dramatists, a courtier-poet of middling talent, and an adventurer who was at various times banished from the court and captured by pirates. The Oxford theory has been doing the rounds since 1920, when an English scholar, Thomas Looney (pronounced Loaney), first brought it before the world.

None of which would matter very much were there not something repellent at the heart of the theory, and that something is the toad, snobbery—the engine that drives the Oxfordian case against the son of the Stratford glover John Shakespeare. John was indeed illiterate. But his son was not, as we know incontrovertibly from no fewer than six surviving signatures in Shakespeare’s own flowing hand, the first from 1612, when he was giving evidence in a domestic lawsuit.

The Earl of Oxford was learned and, by reports, witty. But publicity -materials for Anonymous say that Shakespeare by comparison went to a mere "village school" and so could hardly have compared with the cultural richness imbibed by Oxford. The hell he couldn’t! Stratford was no "village," and the "grammar school," which means elementary education in America, was in fact a cradle of serious classical learning in Elizabethan England. By the time he was 13 or so, Shakespeare would have read (in Latin) works by Terence, Plautus, Virgil, Erasmus, Cicero, and probably Plutarch and Livy too. One of the great stories of the age was what such schooling did for boys of humble birth.

How could Shakespeare have known all about kings and queens and courtiers? By writing for them and playing before them over and over again—nearly a hundred performances before Elizabeth and James, almost 20 times a year in the latter case. His plays were published in quarto from 1598 with his name on the page. The notion that the monarchs would have been gulled into thinking he was the true author, when in fact he wasn’t, beggars belief.

The real problem is not all this idiotic misunderstanding of history and the world of the theater but a fatal lack of imagination on the subject of the imagination. The greatness of Shakespeare is precisely that he did not conform to social type—that he was, in the words of the critic William Hazlitt, "no one and everyone." He didn’t need to go to Italy because Rome had come to him at school and came again in the travels of his roaming mind. His capacity for imaginative extension was socially limitless too: reaching into the speech of tavern tarts as well as archbishops and kings. It is precisely this quicksilver, protean quality that of course stirs the craving in our flat-footed celeb culture for some more fully fleshed-out Author. That’s what, thank heavens, the shape-shifting Shakespeare denies us. But he gives us everything and everyone else. As Hazlitt beautifully and perfectly put it, "He was just like any other man, but ... he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself, but he was all that others were, or that they could become."


Simon Schama is a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. He has been an essayist and critic for The New Yorker since 1994, his art criticism winning the National Magazine Award in 1996. Parts III and IV of his new series, The American Future: A History, air Tuesday night at 8 p.m. on BBC America.

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Thursday, October 20, 2011

Geroge Herbert - Commentary on the Christian Poem "Easter Wings"



Easter Wings
from The Temple (1633), by George Herbert






The same poem turned about on itself
forms a pair of wings






The poem is usually printed in modern anthologies as seen above. In the 1633 edition. the poem is printed as seen in the scanned copy below, making it look more like its title.






For a different placement here are copies of the Williams Manuscript
(also called MS. Jones B 62 in Dr. Williams Library)






The Bodleian MS (also called MS Tanner)
page 1 of "Easter-wings"




~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

George Herbert, The Priest to the Temple - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/herbert?show=worksBy


George Herbert - (1593-1633), Poet and divine

George Herbert was born to a noble family in Wales; his mother was patron to John Donne who dedicated his 'Holy Sonnets' to her. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1620 he was elected to the prestigious post of Public Orator.

His first two sonnets were sent to his mother in 1610. On the theme that the love of God is a worthier subject for verse than the love of woman. They foreshadowed his future religious and poetic inclinations, but at first Herbert seemed bent on a secular career, much involved in court life and Member of Parliament for Montgomery in Wales from 1624-5. His only published verse during this period was in Greek and Latin, for formal occasions.

In 1627, however, he resigned as Orator and was ordained a priest, becoming rector at Bemerton in Wiltshire where he was noted for his diligence and humility, traits reflected in his poetry which also expresses the conflict between the religious and worldly life.

When he realized he was dying of consumption, he sent a collection of his poems in manuscript to his friend Nicholas Ferrar to judge whether to burn them or publish them. The result was The Temple, religious poems using common language and rhythms of speech, published to enormous popular acclaim and running to 13 editions by 1680.

Also published after his death, in 1652, was A Priest to the Temple: Or the Country Parson, his Character and Rule of Life homely, prose advice to country clerics.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Related Criticism to Herbert's poem, "Easter Wings"
http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Easterwings.html

Joseph Addison, in The Spectator, No. 58, Monday, May 7, 1711, argued against ancient Greek poems in the shape of eggs, &c. as false wit. He continued:
Mr. Dryden hints at this obsolete kind of Wit [shaped poems] in one of the following Verses in his Mac Fleckno; which an English Reader cannot understand, who does not know that there are those little Poems abovementioned in the Shape of Wings and Altars.

       . . . Chuse for thy Command
Some peaceful Province in Acrostick Land;
There may'st thou Wings display, and Altars raise,
And torture one poor Word a thousand Ways.
This Fashion of false Wit was revived by several Poets of the last Age, and in particular may be met with among Mr. Herbert's Poems; . . . .
Professor's rebuttal (without degrading Addison's perception or gift for expression):

When devices are dropped into/on to a work, they are just ornaments scattered on pseudo-art/kitsch (in this Addison rings true). When ornaments are integrated into the meaning of the work, they loose their ornamentation and become part of the meaning, working together in the poem. Herbert converted the use of popular devices and tricks of his day into his vision of the world, giving an understanding beyond the mundane. [In a similar way that God takes clay and makes something better out of it.] (JRA)

Art Student's Addenda:

This is the difference between Baroque and Classical Art. Baroque art is famous for its ornaments, but details support the concept of the work in Classical Art.

Music Student's Coda:

The history of music classes Bach as baroque, but his "ornaments" advance and echo the message of the piece and hold the entire work together. As Albert Schweitzer shows concerning the Preludes for Organ. In this way Bach was closer to the Classic Period than most give him credit.


The following is quoted "as is" from a University of Texas at Austin page no longer on the Internet:

Interchange 7 on
George Herbert



Herbert II

Leslie Barnett remarks on "Easter Wings":

"With thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day thy victories:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight on me."

I feel that this poem is saying that you can't just "create" someone then leave them on their own to grow. They will not grow into a strong person with good qualities. A person needs nurturing, love, and support before they can take "flight" on their own. the last line says this more directly, if he puts his wing just over the other persons then their strenght will push him to be strong and begin his own flight. The reference to the Lord's creation of man is only symbolic, I feel that he is speaking indirectly about parenting and society's affect on a person.

Cecile Coneway:
I do not understand what the last line ("Affliction shall advance the flight on me") is saying. How does affliction fit into it?

Todd Erickson:
Why is the reference to the Lord's creation only symbolic??

Colleen Ignacio:
Knowing Herbert, it was probably strictly about religion.

Leslie Barnett:
i think affliction means like friction, when the one wing moves and begins flight the other will recieve the initial push to do the same.

Todd Erickson:
Cecile
Flight could have multiple meanings:
uplifting of spirit, or running away

Shannon Byrne:
I felt that he was talking about man and the creation. I thought he was saying that God created man and gave man everything, yet man "foolishly" lost what he gave and became more and more corrupt. The poet is asking for God to let him sing the Lord's praises and by so doing he will fall in the sight of others and this fall will enable him to be closer to God.

Todd Erickson:
Shannon why does he use 'fall'??? That sounds so counterproductive , when he's wanting to fly.

Alicia Lane Jones:
Correct me if I am wrong,however, if we look at the title, maybe THIS poem reflects the second coming of Christ - didn't that happen on Easter - or does easter refer to something else?

Kalisha James:
Affliction seems to mean some sort of punishment in this passage. It advancing the flight in me refers to punishment maybe leading the speaker to do right and therefore advancing his flight to heaven.

Shannon Byrne:
I thought affliction meant that if he is hurt by others because he is "flying" with God his "flight " will advance or his life will be happier.

Chad Dow:
I think that he is asking God to forgive him for all the wrong things he has done. He is simply wanting to be ackowledge by God and asking for help and strength to change and correct his life, so that he can sing wonderful praises up to God.

Jignesh Bhakta:
Alicia, you are right it is a poem of the second coming of Christ

Shannon Byrne:
Todd:
I'm not really sure except maybe he means fall from the graces of society. Maybe he's thinking that if he follows God he will be persecuted.

Leslie Barnett:
another part that seems to support this interpretation would be:

"And still with sickness and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne."

it seems to be refering to societies tedency to shy away from those that need help the most. when someone looks sickly we don't want to help and that only makes it worse. agood example would be the homeless.

Xavier Alfaro:
colleen ....i agree, it had to be about religion. he must be casting a sermon down. the wings will only protect you for so long. soon you must make choices. make the right one or else. what the else is, i do not know

Kalisha James:
Alicia, I think you're onto something. Easter is about the rising of Christ. It coould, in fact be speaking of the second rising of Christ.

Shannon Byrne:
Alicia,
I think your right.

Jignesh Bhakta:
What is the deal with the shape of the poem?

Alicia Lane Jones:
you know when you are born you don't have any memory of God - it may take a while to find him again. Maybe this is saying that at his tender age he was foolish and not looking in the right places, but now he has found God and wants to fly

Todd Erickson:
wings wings

Chad Dow:
Jignesh,
I think it is to symbolize the wings and the uplifiting flight the guy is about to go on.

Leslie Barnett:
i feel that in both "redemption" and this poem i failed to see the religious connections/interpretations but what shannon said about this poem and what we discussed in class do make sense.

Shannon Byrne:
Alicia,
wha does That I became most thinne mean?

Xavier Alfaro:
Alicia....you are getting pretty deep. I kind of agree though

Kalisha James:
Jignesh, I think the shape resembles a bird, possibly a dove. A dove is used a lot in the Bible to symbolize some sort of overcoming or redemption, the title does also have the word "wings" in it.

Cecile Coneway:
I thought the quote "And still with sickness and shame\Thou didst so punish sinne,\That I became\Most thinne" is illustrating God's way of letting people deal with their sins and suffer their consequences regardless of their physical state.

Leslie Barnett:
looking at your interpretation i think maybe he became thin because sin was punished with sickness and he was sinning by not believing or following?

Kalisha James:
Shannon, I know you asked Alicia, but i think of "thinne" meaning a moral thinness. Obviously the speaker has done some wrongs in order to be punished.

Shannon Byrne:
Cecile,
Is "Thinne" thin or thine

Colleen Ignacio:
I think in his own personal way, he's renewing his vows with God. Easter probably had something to do with it. He says: "My tender age in sorrow did beginne. . .that I became most thinne." He's remembering what part God plays in his life and wants to continue down that path.

Cecile Coneway:
Shannon: I think it's thin.

Xavier Alfaro:
i do to

Cecile Coneway:
It's kind of neat the way the poem's shape becomes the narrowest when it says "Most thinne".

Shannon Byrne:
Kalisha,
If its moral thinness what do the lines before it mean

Alicia Lane Jones:
Do you all think thinne refers to thin or thine?

Leslie Barnett:
what is thine?

Xavier Alfaro:
thin. what's thine

Jignesh Bhakta:
thine?

Leslie Barnett:
oh, maybe most his?

Kalisha James:
Alicia, Are you saying that before we are born we know God, but when we are born we forget Him?

Shannon Byrne:
thine means that this poet is God's

Cecile Coneway:
Most his?

Leslie Barnett:
thy, thine

Alicia Lane Jones:
thine means yours

Vocal arrangement of Easter Wings (White, Medium-high voice and piano, 430-411 For Sale.)

Background: song of a true lark
Optional music: Welsh folksong "Rising of the Lark" arranged by Red Dragon



Wednesday, October 19, 2011

What is Visual Poetry?

Easter Wings by George Herbert


Definition of CALLIGRAM

: a design in which the letters of a word (as a name) are rearranged so as to form a decorative pattern or figure (as for a seal) — compare monogram

From Wikipedia

A calligram is a poem, phrase, or word in which the typeface, calligraphy or handwriting is arranged in a way that creates a visual image. The image created by the words expresses visually what the word, or words, say. In a poem, it manifests visually the theme presented by the text of the poem. Guillaume Apollinaire was a famous calligram writer and author of a book of poems called Calligrammes. His poem written in the form of the Eiffel Tower is an example of a calligram.


EARLY VISUAL POETRY

Famous Calligrammes, by Apollinaire

Calligrammes, subtitled Poems of war and peace 1913-1916, is a collection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, and was first published in 1918 (see 1918 in poetry). Calligrammes is noted for how the typeface and spatial arrangement of the words on a page plays just as much of a role in the meaning of each poem as the words themselves - a form called a calligram. In this sense, the collection can be seen as either concrete poetry or visual poetry. Apollinaire described his work as follows:

The Calligrammes are an idealisation of free verse poetry and typographical precision in an era when typography is reaching a brilliant end to its career, at the dawn of the new means of reproduction that are the cinema and the phonograph.

                             - Guillaume Apollinaire, in a letter to André Billy


Calligrammes by Apollinaire -

http://www.google.com/search?q=apollinaire+calligrammes&hl=en&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS421US423&biw=1539&bih=822&site=webhp&prmd=imvnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7SafTtlAg-SIAu_BhYYB&sqi=2&ved=0CCAQsAQ


Apollinaire’s most celebrated Calligrammes






























CONTEMPORARY VISUAL POETRY

Peter Ciccariello’s “Credible report III”

Image by [Peter Ciccariello’s](http://invisiblenotes.blogspot.com/) “Credible report III”

Visual Poetry

Visual poetry (also called VisPo and concrete poetry) is poetry in which the visual element is as important—or sometimes more important—than the verbal one. It’s meant to be seen. All poetry has a visual component, but visual poetry self-consciously emphasizes and exploits images in the creation of meaning. To many, these poems are not just literary works, but works of art.

While some claim that visual poetry has existed since humanity’s first use of writing, many see its modern Western beginnings either in 1896 with Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés or around 1914 with the work of Guillaume Apollinaire and Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti.

Visual poetry experienced a renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s on the European continent and in Brazil with the movement known as concrete poetry.

Eugen Gomringer, “Wind”

Haroldo de Campos, “Nasce Morre”

Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s—and afterwards—people also created poetry incorporating more complex pictures. Some labeled it “visual poetry” as a category distinct from concrete poetry. How concrete and visual poetry are classified and related to each other is still open to debate.

Carol Stetser, “Hierogram”

K.S. Ernst and Sheila Murphy, “Vortextique”


Today many visual poets have incorporated sound and motion in their poetry: http://vispo.com/

Visual poetry takes a variety of forms. The genre has an elasticity that leads to ever-widening avenues for creation of meaning. The links to the poets here give are just a tiny taste of its rich world.


More Visual Poetry Images -

L'oiseau_et_le_bouquet

Caligrafia_arabe_pajaro_svg


Bismillah


Figurengedicht_1638



Heinritzh Sales voir son site


ebon heath: on visual poetry
DateSunday, May 24, 2009 at 9:33AM

Ebon Heath is a Brooklyn-based artist/graphic designer with a love of typography and an interest in giving a dynamic, three-dimensional and physical representation to all the "visual noise" that permeates everyday city life. His work is very much influenced by hip hop. Both lyrically and rhythmically. He sees the work as a way to "cleanse or release content contained inside us."

His work honors *craft* in a heavily digital world. I love the statement he is making. And what a gorgeous statement it is.

Read the article on Yatzer to learn more.

Ebon Heath
http://www.yatzer.com/1690_ebon_heath_and_his_visual_poetry



Ebon Heath
http://www.yatzer.com/1690_ebon_heath_and_his_visual_poetry



Ebon Heath
http://www.yatzer.com/1690_ebon_heath_and_his_visual_poetry


The popular song goes that words don’t come easy, and, ironically enough, this is exactly the sense one has when trying to express himself in front of Ebon Heath’s typographic mobiles. Heath is one of the most promising artists of the moment and his take on typography is pure visual poetry. Words never looked more astonishing, they form their own structures in a short of a rebellion, they dance and move and yet they stand still. In Heath’s universe, words go out of their suffocating homes, they become alive and they tell us their amazing stories.



Ebon Heath
http://www.yatzer.com/1690_ebon_heath_and_his_visual_poetry



ADVERTISEMENTS, BULLETINS, PLAY BILLS AS VISUAL POETRY






mix of calligrams (calligramme, calligramma) by Laura Ruggeri ©1995-2005




Mathematical Masterpieces: Making Art From Equations

Artists use math to create works of art to rival gallery masterpieces.

Bunny-Squared

This is a self-referential bunny — a sculpture of a bunny, the surface of which is tiled by 72 copies of the word "Bunny." This piece is part of a larger series of "autologlyphs," following on from HS's "Sphere Autologlyph" from the 2010 Bridges art exhibition. An autologlyph is a word written or represented in a way which is described by the word itself. This style of autologlyph combines Escher-style tessellation with typographical ideas related to ambigrams.

The bunny was created using a technique published by CSK for transferring a symmetric design to a suitably parameterized mesh surface. We modified the technique to require a quarter as many copies of the fundamental domain as compared with the original version. This allowed us to send a smaller (and more affordable) model to the 3D printer. The design of the word "Bunny" was produced using Adobe Illustrator, then thickened in 2D, triangulated, mapped to the 3D surface, and extruded into a thin shell for manufacture.

“Bunny” Bunny by Craig S. Kaplan and Henry Segerman. Plastic, Selective-Laser-Sintered.


Poems of Ted Kooser


A Birthday Poem

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.


- Ted Kooser, Jan 13, 2003




After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.


- Ted Kooser, Jan 13, 2003




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 barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.


- Ted Kooser, April 1, 2004




In January

Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.


- Ted Kooser, Jan 13, 2003





Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.


- Ted Kooser, Jan 13, 2003


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Biography of Ted Kooser

 
Ted Kooser, b. 1939

Poet and essayist Ted Kooser is known for his honest, accessible verse that celebrates the quotidian and captures a vanishing way of life. Brad Leithauser wrote in the New York Times Book Review that, “Whether or not he originally set out to…[Kooser’s] become, perforce, an elegist.” Populated by farmers, family ancestors, and heirlooms, Kooser’s poems reflect his abiding interest in the past, but escape nostalgia in part because of their clear-eyed appraisal of its hardships. While Kooser’s work often treats themes like love, family and the passage of time, Leithauser noted that “Kooser’s poetry is rare for its sense of being so firmly and enduringly rooted in one locale.” Though Kooser does not consider himself a regional poet, his work often takes place in a recognizably Mid-western setting; when Kooser was named US Poet Laureate in 2004, he was described by the librarian of Congress as “‘the first poet laureate chosen from the Great Plains.” However, David Mason in the Prairie Schooner saw Kooser’s work as more than merely regional, arguing that Kooser’s vision was actually universal: Kooser, Mason wrote, “has mostly made short poems about perception itself, the signs of human habitation, the uncertainty of human knowledge and accomplishment.”

In his book Can Poetry Matter, the critic Dana Gioia described Kooser as a “popular poet”—not one who sells millions of books, but “popular in that unlike most of his peers he writes naturally for a nonliterary public. His style is accomplished but extremely simple—his diction drawn from common speech, his syntax conversational. His subjects are chosen from the everyday world of the Great Plains, and his sensibility, though more subtle and articulate, is that of the average Midwesterner. Kooser never makes an allusion that an intelligent but unbookish reader will not immediately grasp. There is to my knowledge no poet of equal stature who writes so convincingly in a manner the average American can understand and appreciate.” Gioia argued that it is Kooser’s interest in providing “small but genuine insights into the world of everyday experience” that cut him off from the “specialized minority readership that now sustains poetry.”

Though Gioia noted that Kooser has “not received sustained attention from academic critics,” he is considered by some to be among the best poets of his generation. However, Kooser’s fame—including a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry—came late in his career. Kooser began writing in his late teens and took a position teaching high school after graduating from Iowa State University in 1962. He enrolled in the graduate writing program at the University of Nebraska but essentially flunked out a year later. Realizing that he had to make a living, Kooser took an entry-level job with an insurance company in Nebraska. He would remain in the industry until 1999, eventually becoming a vice-president of Lincoln Benefit Life Company. Throughout his insurance career, Kooser wrote poems, usually from about five-thirty to seven o’clock each morning before he went to the office. Kooser has wryly noted that, though both he and Wallace Stevens spent their working lives as insurance executives, Stevens had far more time to write on the job.

Kooser’s early work attends to the subjects that continue to shape his career: the trials and troubles of inhabitants of the Midwest, heirlooms and objects of the past, and observation of everyday life

  • Kooser’s first new and selected, Sure Signs (1980) was critically praised. The Black Warrior Book Review maintained it “could well become a classic precisely because so many of the poems are not only excellent but are readily possessible.”
  • In Blizzard Voices (1986), Kooser records the devastation of the “Children’s Blizzard” of 1888, using documents written at the time as well as reminisces recorded later. The Omaha World-Herald called it a “reader’s theater…short but powerful.”
  •  
  • The well-observed truths of Kooser’s next book, Weather Central (1994), led Booklist critic Ray Olson to note that “the scenes and actions in [Kooser’s] poetry (especially the way that, in several poems, light—the quintessential physical reality on the plains—is a virtually corporeal actor) will seem, to paraphrase Pope, things often seen but ne’er so well observed.”
  •  
  • In the late 1990s, Kooser developed cancer and gave up both his insurance job and writing. When he began to write again, it was to paste daily poems on postcards he sent in correspondence with his friend and fellow writer Jim Harrison. The result was the collection of poems called Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison (2001). In poems both both playful and serious, Kooser avoids talking directly about his illness. Rather, he refers to disease and the possibility of dying in metaphors focusing on the countryside around his Nebraska home, where he took long walks for inspiration. Kooser’s gift for simile and metaphor is notable: “Kooser is one of the best makers of metaphor alive in the country, and for this alone he deserves honor,” wrote Mason in a review of Winter Morning Walks for Prairie Schooner.
American poet: Ted Kooser is presidential professor of English
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He served as poet laureate
from 2004-06, and his book "Delights & Shadows" won the
Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2005.
  • Kooser strayed from poetry with his next book, a collection of essays titled Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (2002). Once again, Kooser zeroes in on the place he calls home. Just outside of Garland, Nebraska, the community is facetiously referred to as the “Bohemian Alps.” The essays cover one year, or four seasons, in the author’s life. Although Kooser reflects on his younger days, the essays focus largely on the details of his current life and surroundings. In a contribution to Writer, Kate Flaherty said, “Kooser’s meditations on life in southeastern Nebraska are as meticulous and exquisite as his many collections of poetry, and his quiet reticence and dry humor are refreshing in this age of spill-it-all memoirs.”
  •  
  • For Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (2003) Kooser again teamed up with Harrison to publish their correspondence consisting of entirely short poems written to each other while Kooser was recovering from cancer. Writing in Poetry, contributor Ray Olson noted that “wit and wisdom” are the mainstay of these correspondences. Olson added, “Their conversation always repays eavesdropping.”

  • Kooser’s next book, Delights and Shadows (2004) went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In the Washington Post poet and critic Ed Hirsch noted that “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.” Describing the work as “a book of portraits and landscapes…small wonders and hard dualisms,” Hirsch compared Kooser’s art to other Great Plains’ poets who write “an unadorned, pragmatic, quintessentially American poetry of empty places, of farmland and low-slung cities,” crafting poems of “sturdy forthrightness with hidden depths.”
  •  
  • When Kooser was named America’s national poet laureate in 2004, the honor coincided with the publication of Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985 (2005), a collection of his previously published poetry. At the time, the self-effacing poet was by no means a household name. Of Flying at Night, New York Times Book Review contributor Brad Leithauser wrote, “This is good, honest work,” and Library Journal reviewer Louis McKee wrote that “Kooser’s pure American voice and clear-eyed observation are a refreshing treat after the cynical, skeptical poetry from the...coasts.”

Kooser used his post as laureate to further the cause of poetry with a general reading audience. Partnering with the Poetry Foundation, he began the “American Life in Poetry” program, which offers a free weekly poem to newspapers across the United States. The aim of the program is to raise the visibility of poetry.

  • Kooser’s other publications, including The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (2005) and Writing Brave and Free (2006), offer help to aspiring poets and writers, both in the guise of practical writing tips and essays on poetry, poets, and craft.
  •  
  • Kooser’s next non-fiction book, Lights on a Ground of Darkness (2009) returned to the meditations on place that marked Local Wonders, though the book focuses on Kooser’s family, especially his Uncle Elvy. David Ulin of the Lost Angeles Times described the book as “written in a prose as spare as a winter sunset,” adding that “it is an elegy, not just for Kooser’s forebears but for all of us.”

Kooser teaches poetry and nonfiction at the University of Nebraska, and continues to write. “I waste very little time anymore,” he said an interview for the University of Nebraska English Department newsletter. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his many honors and awards include the Nebraska Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Commenting on his writing, Kooser also told Contemporary Authors: “I write for other people with the hope that I can help them to see the wonderful things within their everyday experiences. In short, I want to show people how interesting the ordinary world can be if you pay attention.”

[Updated 2010]


Career

Writer. Bankers Life Nebraska (insurance firm), Lincoln, underwriter, beginning 1964; New Business, Lincoln, second vice president, 1972; Lincoln Benefit Life Co., Lincoln, underwriter, 1973-84, second vice president for marketing, 1984-92, vice president for public relations, 1992-99. University of Nebraska, Lincoln, adjunct professor of writing, 1970-95, visiting professor, beginning 2000. Narrator of a sound recording of his work, Out of the Ordinary (lecture and poetry), 2005.

Bibliography
 
POETRY 
  • Official Entry Blank, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1969.
  • Grass County, Windflower (Lincoln, NE), 1971.
  • Twenty Poems, Best Cellar Press (Crete, NE), 1973.
  • A Local Habitation and a Name, Solo Press (San Luis Obispo, CA), 1974.
  • Not Coming to Be Barked At, Pentagram Press (Milwaukee, WI), 1976.
  • Old Marriage and New: Poems, Cold Mountain Press (Austin, TX), 1978.
  • Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1980.
  • (With William Kloefkorn) Cottonwood County, Windflower (Lincoln, NE), 1980.
  • One World at a Time, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1985.
  • The Blizzard Voices, Bieler (Minneapolis, MN), 1986.
  • Weather Central, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1994.
  • Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2001.
  • (With Jim Harrison) Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2003.
  • Delights and Shadows: Poems, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2004.
  • Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2005.
  • Valentines, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2008.
 
OTHER
  • Hatcher (illustrated fiction), Windflower (Lincoln, NE), 1978.
  • (Editor) The Windflower Home Almanac of Poetry, Windflower, 1980.
  • On Common Ground: The Poetry of William Kloefkorn, Ted Kooser, Greg Kuzma, and Don Welch, Sandhills Press (Lewiston, ID), 1983.
  • Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (essays), University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2002.
  • The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (essays), University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2005.
  • (With Steve Cox) Writing Brave and Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2006.
  • Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of Place and Time, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2009.
Poetry appeared in numerous magazines and literary reviews, including the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Hudson Review, Kansas Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Atlantic Monthly, and Shenandoah.

Further Reading

PERIODICALS
  • Booklist, April 1, 2003, Ray Olson, review of Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry, p. 1367; February 15, 2005, Patricia Monaghan, review of The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, p. 1052.
  • Library Journal, April 15, 2005, Louis McKee, review of Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, p. 90.
  • New York Times Book Review, August 7, 2005, Brad Leithauser, review of Flying at Night, p. 15.
  • Poetry, February, 2002, John Taylor, review of Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison, p. 295.
  • Prairie Schooner, fall, 2002, David Mason, review of Winter Morning Walks, p. 187.
  • Weekly Standard, February 14, 2005, David Mason, review of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, p. 38.
  • Writer, November, 2002, Kate Flaherty, review of Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, p. 56.

ONLINE
  • Barnes and Noble Web site, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers (November 3, 2003), "Ted Kooser."
  • University of Nebraska Web Site, Department of English Newsletter, March 29, 2002, http://www.unl.edu/english/html/news/ (November 3, 2003), Janet Carlson, "Profiles."


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 
by Ted Kooser b. 1939 Ted Kooser

She had turned her face up into
a rain of light, and came on smiling.
The light trickled down her forehead
and into her eyes. It ran down
into the neck of her sweatshirt
and wet the white tops of her breasts.
Her brown shoes splashed on
into the light. The moment was like
a circus wagon rolling before her
through puddles of light, a cage on wheels,
and she walked fast behind it,
exuberant, curious, pushing her cane
through the bars, poking and prodding,
while the world cowered back in a corner.

Ted Kooser, “A Blind Woman” from Weather Central.
Copyright © 1994 by Ted Kooser. All rights are controlled
by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260,

Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh  Press.
Source: Weather Central (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994)





Letter in October
by Ted Kooser b. 1939 Ted Kooser

Dawn comes later and later now,
and I, who only a month ago
could sit with coffee every morning
watching the light walk down the hill
to the edge of the pond and place
a doe there, shyly drinking,

then see the light step out upon
the water, sowing reflections
to either side—a gardan
of trees that grew as if by magic -
now see no more than my face,
mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

startled by time. While I slept,
night in its thick winter jacket
bridled the doe with a twist
of wet leaves and led her away,
then brought its black horse with harness
that creaked like a cricket, and turned

the water garden under. I woke,
and at the waiting window found
the curtains open to my open face;
beyond me, darkness. And I,
who only wished to keep looking out,
must now keep looking in.

Ted Kooser, “A Letter in October” from Weather Central.
Copyright © 1994 by Ted Kooser. All rights are controlled
by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260,

Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source: Weather Central (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994)