POET

Ted Kooser (1939 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Although he spent thirty-five years in the insurance business, Theodore Kooser remained committed to writing and has authored several books of poetry. He is considered by some critics to be among the best poets of his generation. "I don't know why this news hasn't been more widely trumpeted," wrote David Mason in the Prairie Schooner. "Perhaps it is because he has usually written brief, lucid poems while prominent critics fawn over poets who sprawl among their allusions." Mason also noted that in his collections Kooser "has mostly made short poems about perception itself, the signs of human habitation, the uncertainty of human knowledge and accomplishment."

Kooser began writing in his late teens and took a position teaching high school after graduating from Iowa State University in 1962. He soon enrolled in the graduate writing program at the University of Nebraska and worked as a graduate reader until he essentially flunked out a year later. In an interview on the Barnes and Noble Web site, Kooser said that he was "a completely undisciplined scholar."

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. Throughout his insurance career, Kooser kept on writing, usually from about five-thirty to seven o'clock each morning before he went to the office. "I never saw myself as an insurance executive, but rather as a writer in need of a paying job," Kooser said in the Barnes and Noble interview.

In the late 1990s, Kooser developed cancer and essentially gave up both his job and writing. When he began to write again, Kooser would paste his daily poems on postcards he sent in correspondence with his friend and fellow writer Jim Harrison. The result was the 2001 collection of poems called Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison. Addressing both playful and serious poems, Kooser for the most part avoids talking directly about his illness in the collection. 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 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. Mason also noted, "Kooser has often argued against the knee-jerk narcissism of poetry, and here he rarely dwells on his autobiography, though we can sense his personality by the quality of his observations." John Taylor, writing in Poetry, noted that "a rare quality distinguishes Winter Morning Walks."

Kooser strayed from poetry with his next book, a collection of essays titled Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps. 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—as when he recalls his grandmother's cooking—the essays focus largely on the details of his current life and surroundings, such as the essay about an old-fashioned outhouse that sits on his rural property. 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 Kooser teamed up with his friend 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."

As for Kooser, he returned to teaching poetry and nonfiction at the University of Nebraska, and he continues to write. "I waste very little time anymore," he said an interview for the University of Nebraska English Department newsletter.

Although sometimes classified as a "regional" writer because of his focus on the Midwest and Nebraska, Kooser has a different view of his work. He once told Contemporary Authors: "I work with all subject matter and in all forms. Most of my work reflects my interest in my surroundings here on the Great Plains, but I do not consider myself to be a regionalist writer."

Commenting on his writing, Kooser also told Contemporary Authors: "I wrote poetry from the time I was quite young and got serious about it as a teenager. The first poets I read have remained strong influences: Edward Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, May Swenson, John Crowe Robinson, and others. The biggest influence on my writing today is growing older."

"I am often surprised by which poems magazine editors like, as opposed to those I think are my best work. My favorite book is Weather Central, but I am fond of Delights and Shadows.

"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."

When Kooser was named America's national poet laureate in 2004, the honor coincided with the publication of Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, a collection of his previously published poetry. At the time of his recognition as poet laureate by the Library of Congress, 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," a tribute to the Midwest that the poet calls home. Though Kooser maintains that composing regional poetry has not been his primary aim, Leithauser observed that "Kooser has been memorializing a vanishing world." Library Journal reviewer Louis McKee wrote: "Kooser's pure American voice and clear-eyed observation are a refreshing treat after the cynical, skeptical poetry from the ... coasts."

The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets is less a how-to manual than a collection of essays about poetry and poets, "a treatise of aesthetics under the guise of a textbook" as David Mason described it in the Weekly Standard. He added: "Kooser is out to rescue populism from its blunter forms, and his book is not without sophistication." Kooser does offer specific guidelines for writing poetry, Patricia Monaghan reported in her Booklist review, one of which is "to focus on the work of poetry rather than on the idea of being a poet."

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, EXCEPT AS NOTED

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.
Hatcher (illustrated fiction), Windflower (Lincoln, NE), 1978.
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.
(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.
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.
Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (essays), University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2002.
(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.
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.

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.