Depression Glass

By Ted Kooser b. 1939 Ted Kooser

It seemed those rose-pink dishes

she kept for special company

were always cold, brought down

from the shelf in jingling stacks,

the plates like the panes of ice

she broke from the water bucket

winter mornings, the flaring cups

like tulips that opened too early

and got bitten by frost. They chilled

the coffee no matter how quickly

you drank, while a heavy

everyday mug would have kept

a splash hot for the better

part of a conversation. It was hard

to hold up your end of the gossip

with your coffee cold, but it was

a special occasion, just the same,

to sit at her kitchen table

and sip the bitter percolation

of the past week’s rumors from cups

it had taken a year to collect

at the grocery, with one piece free

for each five pounds of flour.

Ted Kooser, “Depression Glass” from Delights and Shadows. Copyright © 2004 by Ted Kooser. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P. O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004)

Biography

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 . . .

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