"So this is Nebraska..."
Ted Kooser was born 84 years ago today, April 25.
If hope you know about Ted Kooser, who was the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 - 2006. He worked for many years as a life insurance executive while he continued to write and perfect his poetry. For fifteen years he edited a weekly newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry” which is available online at www.americanlifeinpoetry.org and is currently edited by Kwame Dawes.
Ted Kooser has won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, a 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.
He is also the author of The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. It is a slim book at 158 pages, but it is perfect for those who are a bit intimidated by poetry but want to start writing it in earnest. He sets the tone early in the book with this:
It is possible to nourish a small and appreciative audience for poetry if poets would only think less about the reception of critics and more about the needs of readers. The Poetry Home Repair Manual advocates for poems that can be read and understood without professional interpretation. My teacher and mentor, Karl Shapiro, once pointed out that the poetry of the twentieth century was the first poetry that had to be taught. He might have said that had to be explained. I believe with all my heart that it’s a virtue to show our appreciation for readers by writing with kindness, generosity, and humility toward them. Everything you’ll read here holds to that.
The manual full of his poetry and the wisdom he has gathered over decades of writing and teaching. He uses his work and those of others, like Emily Dickinson, Robert Bly, and Kim Addonizio (who, with Dorianne Laux, wrote their own very good poetry manual), to illustrate what good poems are supposed to do.
One of his most well known poems is “So This Is Nebraska” (which is also one of my favorite poems of his). Here you have it read by Dick Cavett in honor of the University of Nebraska's 150th anniversary.
Happy birthday, Ted Kooser! You are a treasure.
Thank you for introducing me to Ted Kooser. I used to write a series on an old blog called Judge a book by its cover - that title alone would’ve pulled me in. I’m a huge fan of Robert Bly!