poem is resting atop an upright rug
Kooser is something of an ambassador for getting poetry in the hands of “regular” readers. He writes a free column for newspapers (American Life in Poetry), and started a publishing company, Wildflower Press (no longer operating) to circulate contemporary poets. He strikes me as a lovely man whose ambition is not to enrich his life with literary success but for literature to enrich other people: “I write for other people,” Kooser says, “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.”
Ted Kooser comes from and lives in the ordinary, un-rarified world of the Great Plains. He was born in 1939 in Iowa and has lived most of his life in Nebraska. He began his career as a high school teacher but worked most of his career as a vice president at a life insurance company. Here’s a wonderful fact about Kooser: he flunked out of a graduate writing program (I’m not sure how you do that) which didn’t prevent him from becoming the Poet Laureate from 2004-06. His work is deemed “accessible,” and therefore has received less critical attention than it deserves.
