TED KOOSER: POET LAUREATE OF THE MIDWEST

OVERVIEW:

Ted Kooser, named the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2004, is a poet and essayist who caters to a nonliterary audience, showing through his poetry that ordinary life can be interesting if you pay attention. His poetry collections include Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison, Delights and Shadows,  Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, Splitting an Order, Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems, and more. He has also written books to help aspiring poets, one of which is The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS:

In his book The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, Ted Kooser talks about how he generates ideas for poems. 

When explaining this process he quotes the following writers: 

Jane Hirschfield - “A work of art defines itself into being, when we awaken into it and by it, when we are moved, altered, stirred. It feels as if we have done nothing, only give it a little time, a little space; some hairline-narrow crack opens in the self, and there it is” (13).

Franz Kafka - “You do not even have to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, remain still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet" (13).

Ted Kooser describes the creative process as something unconscious. A poem starts from something that a person observes like an image or word that they find fascinating. Then as they write, ideas will start to emerge. Though a person can have a fully formed idea and can try to wrap the poem around the idea, it is much easier and more engaging to start with something they find interesting, and then expand and explore as they go (13-16).

This is one example of Ted Kooser’s works that just starts with an image: 

A Rainy Morning

A young woman in a wheelchair,

Wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,

Is pushing herself through the morning.

You have seen how pianists

Sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,

Then lift their hands, draw back to rest,

Then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.

Such is the way this woman

Strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,

Letting them float, then bends again to strike

Just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.

So expertly she plays the chords

Of this difficult music she has mastered,

Her wet face beautiful in its concentration.

While the wind turns the pages of rain. 

IN CONNECTION WITH NICK CAVE’S FAITH, HOPE, AND CARNAGE: 

Famous songwriter and singer Nick Cave talks about a similar process in Faith, Hope, and Carnage when he goes to the studio to improvise with his partner, Warren. To Cave, the improvisation was both intuitive and considered. Though he would bring a huge volume of ideas for his lyrics to the studio, the ideas would be far from being fully formed. Only through improvisation based on the “certain dominant or overarching themes” that have been in his mind leading up to the sessions is he able to come up with stunning music (6). Like Ted Kooser, there is an element of exploration that starts with just images and vague ideas. 

Links: 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ted-kooser

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/139984.Ted_Kooser

Books:

Faith, Hope, and Carnage

The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets