Product Description

Named U.S. Poet Laureate for 2004-2005, Ted Kooser is one of America's masters of the short metaphorical poem. Dana Gioia has remarked that Kooser has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation.

In Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, Kooser has selected poems from two of his earlier works, Sure Signs (1980) and One World at a Time (1985). Taken together or read one at a time, these poems clearly show why William Cole, writing in the Saturday Review, called Ted Kooser "a wonderful poet," and why Peter Stitt, writing in the Georgia Review, proclaimed him "a skilled and cunning writer. . . . An authentic 'poet of the American people.'"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230912 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-11
• Released on: 2005-03-11
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 158 pages

From the Back Cover
"Will one day rank alongside of Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams."--Minneapolis Tribune

"Ted Kooser is a poet whose company will always be welcome, whether in Nebraska or in East Anglia."--Hudson Review

About the Author
Ted Kooser, retired vice president of Lincoln Benefit Life Company in Lincoln, Nebraska, is the author of ten books of poetry and two works of nonfiction. He has twice been awarded fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. Sure Signs was awarded the Society of Midland Authors Prize in 1980. Kooser has also won the Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, the James Boatwright Prize, two Prairie Schooner Awards, the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. Ted Kooser is the 13th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Customer Reviews

You'll go back to it from time to time...or at least you should.
As I have read poetry in the last six years I have gotten in the habit (not always the best) of either marking the corner of or 'dog-earing' a page with a poem that I like. I've found that I've marked alot of corners in Mr. Kooser's book. I have especially liked his poems that contemplate the somber side of life. I've gone back to "After My Grandmother's Funeral" multiple times to wrestle again, as Kooser does, with the tension between youth and aging...and the realities of death. You'll find yourself doing the same when you read these poems.

Plain language, striking metaphors
My daughter's high school has an acronym for certain literature assignments: DHM, deep hidden meaning. If you are weary of DHM, then read Mr. Kooser. DM, no H. He uses Saxon-rooted vocabulary for metaphors so apt, yet stunning, that they stop you short. I will give this book as presents to my best friends.

Delightful
Ted Kooser is the poet for the rest of us. Mr. Kooser shuns intellectual poetry, the kind that makes you feel you need an interpreter to understand it. His poems are down-to-earth, rooted in an intense love for the simple pleasures of life. He lives on a farm in Nebraska and his work resonates with images from this rural lifestyle. This was the first book of poetry I willfully sought out and bought since college; reading it has been pure delight.