Ted Kooser
Poetry
Mar/Apr 2020
Wooly Caterpillar
I came upon you on a sidewalk, black as a hyphen slowly crossing a page, as if you were trying to connect the last word in October with a word […]
Poetry
Mar/Apr 2020
Wooly Caterpillar
It was a pleasure to read through the entries for our first nonfiction contest. The essays covered a wide range of subjects, and some of the best functioned on multiple […]
Nature’s Nature
May/June 2019
Raspberry Patch
Summer is in and under and all around each leaf and thorny cane and every weed and stalk of foxtail woven among them, as if this were a tank brim […]
Poetry
Nov/Dec 2016
In November
The leaves at the tops of the trees are the last to fall. They cling to summer as the first cold winds begin to pinch at them like someone’s fingers […]
Poetry
Nov/Dec 2016
Locust Trees in Late May
Two of them, sixty feet high, with trunks as big around as fifty-gallon barrels, lean at a corner of the house, sprinkling their tiny green burr-like flowers over the deck […]
Poetry
Spring 2014
Sundial
Two friends, dead now for many years, bought it for us one Christmas, picked it out of a Crate & Barrel catalog and had it shipped with a little card […]
Poetry
Fall 2011
A Jonathan in Spring
for Maxine Kumin An apple tree may live about as long as a horse, and our old Jonathan, now rickety and lame with foot rot, must surely be close to […]
Poetry
Fall 2011
Lantern
In the predawn cold and darkness,it was only a pinch of light,not more than a cup of warmth,as a farmer carried it over the snowto the barn where his dozen […]
Poetry
Fall 2011
In Passing
As if it were waiting for someone, the house faced the road, its door held open by a little bronze dog, the lace curtains at its windows drawn back and […]
Poetry
Winter 2008
Success
I can feel the thick yellow fat of applause building up in my arteries, friends, yet I go on, a fool for adoration. Do I care that when it sloughs […]
Poetry
Winter 2008
Splitting an Order
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half, maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread, no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky arms […]
Poetry
Winter 2008
Bad News
Because it arrives while you sleep, it’s the one call you never pick up on the first ring. In that pause between the fourth and what would be the fifth, […]
Poetry
Winter 2008
Two Men on an Errand
The younger, a balloon of a man in his sixties with some of the life let out of him, sags on the cheap couch in the car repair shop’s waiting […]
Poetry
Winter 2008
Spanish Lessons
My wife moves room to room, touching our humble belongings with a wand of new words— the iron, the coffee pot, the radio— making them notice themselves for the first […]
Poetry
Winter 2002
Walking on Tiptoe
Long ago we quit lifting our heels like the other—horse, dog, and tiger— though we thrill to their speed as they flee. Even the mouse bearing the great weight of […]
Poetry
Winter 2002
Praying Hands
There is at least one pair in every thrift shop in America, molded in plastic or plaster of paris and glued to a plaque, or printed in church-pamphlet colors and […]
Poetry
Winter 2002
Sixty-First Birthday
By the toe of my boot, a pebble of quartz, one drop of the earth's milk, dirty and cold. I held it to the light and could almost see through […]
Poetry
Summer 1993
Weather Central
Each evening at six-fifteen, the weatherman turns a shoulder to us, extends his hand, and talking softly as a groom, cautiously smooths and strokes the massive, dappled flank of the […]
Poetry
Summer 1993
Surveyors
They have come from the past, wearing their orange doublets like medieval pages. Seeing through time, they see nothing of us. For them the world is rock upon rock. There […]
Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser served two terms as U.S. poet laureate and during his second term was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He lives in rural Nebraska and teaches part-time at […]
Ted Kooser
A Conversation With Ted Kooser by KR poetry editor David Baker Ted Kooser is an American original, whose work in poetry is akin to the paintings of Grant Wood and […]