Robin Chapman's Poem a Day Blog

2012-01-14T22:40:00.003-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 355

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Here’s an experience that I’d guess most of the men who read this column have had, getting into a rental tuxedo. Bill Trowbridge, a poet from Missouri, does a fine job of picturing that particular initiation rite.

Rental Tux

It chafed like some new skin we’d grown,
or feathers, the cummerbund and starched collar
pinching us to show how real this transformation
into princes was, how powerful we’d grown
by getting drivers’ licenses, how tall and total
our new perspective, above that rusty keyhole
parents squinted through. We’d found the key:
that nothing really counts except a romance
bright as Technicolor, wide as Cinerama,
and this could be the night. No lie.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetrymagazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by William Trowbridge, from his most recent book of poems, Ship of Fool, Red Hen Press, 2011. Introduction copyright ©2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2012-01-02T12:53:00.001-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 354

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

A wise friend told me that since the Age of Reason we’ve felt we had to explain everything, and that as a result we’ve forgotten the value of mystery. Here’s a poem by Lisel Mueller that celebrates mystery. Mueller is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet from Illinois.

Sometimes, When the Light

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles
and pulls you back into childhood

and you are passing a crumbling mansion
completely hidden behind old willows

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks
and giant firs standing hip to hip,

you know again that behind that wall,
under the uncut hair of the willows

something secret is going on,
so marvelous and dangerous

that if you crawled through and saw,
you would die, or be happy forever.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1980 by Lisel Mueller, from her most recent book of poems, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Poem reprinted by permission of Lisel Mueller and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-12-12T17:53:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 351

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

In many of those Japanese paintings with Mt. Fuji in the background, we find tiny figures moving along under the immensity of the landscape. Here’s an American version of a scene like that, by Stanley Plumly of Maryland, one of our country’s most accomplished poets.

Off A Side Road Near Staunton

Some nothing afternoon, no one anywhere,
an early autumn stillness in the air,
the kind of empty day you fill by taking in
the full size of the valley and its layers leading
slowly to the Blue Ridge, the quality of country,
if you stand here long enough, you could stay
for, step into, the way a landscape, even on a wall,
pulls you in, one field at a time, pasture and fall
meadow, high above the harvest, perfect
to the tree line, then spirit clouds and intermittent
sunlit smoky rain riding the tops of the mountains,
though you could walk until it’s dark and not reach those rains—
you could walk the rest of the day into the picture
and not know why, at any given moment, you’re there.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Old Heart, by Stanley Plumly. Copyright ©2007 by Stanley Plumly. Used by permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-12-05T17:50:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 350

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The persons we are when we are young are probably buried somewhere within us when we’ve grown old. Denise Low, who was the Kansas poet laureate, takes a look at a younger version of herself in this telling poem.

Two Gates

I look through glass and see a young woman

of twenty, washing dishes, and the window

turns into a painting. She is myself thirty years ago.

She holds the same blue bowls and brass teapot

I still own. I see her outline against lamplight;

she knows only her side of the pane. The porch

where I stand is empty. Sunlight fades. I hear

water run in the sink as she lowers her head,

blind to the future. She does not imagine I exist.

I step forward for a better look and she dissolves

into lumber and paint. A gate I passed through

to the next life loses shape. Once more I stand

squared into the present, among maple trees

and scissor-tailed birds, in a garden, almost

a mother to that faint, distant woman.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Denise Low, from her most recent book of poetry, Ghost Stories of the New West, Woodley Memorial Press, 2010. Poem reprinted by permission of Denise Low and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-11-23T21:13:00.000-05:00

By Robin Chapman

What Luck

to be tuned to this fraction 

of spectrum we see as rainbow, rainbow,

that our two small ear-drums 

move to the hum of another’s voice,

those twin stretched membranes

 vibrating resonant with breath,

that these gyroscopes of our inner ear 

track our cartwheels when gravity tugs,

that our tongues taste honey and salt.

 What luck that we can smell the rain,

that these hands can touch, cradle,

 caress this skin that enfolds us

all our days—what luck to be born 

root and blossom and branch of life

into this world we’re shaped to—

 to tremble in its flux

with the hunting hawk, the mouse

 the layered rocks, the eelgrass meadow.

-originally appeared in Ascent and the eelgrass meadow (Tebot Bach),

2011-11-14T00:38:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 343

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Most of us have received the delayed news of the death of a family member or friend, and perhaps have reflected on lost opportunities. Here’s a fine poem by J. T. Ledbetter, who lives in California but grew up on the Great Plains.

Crossing Shoal Creek

The letter said you died on your tractor
crossing Shoal Creek.
There were no pictures to help the memories fading
like mists off the bottoms that last day on the farm
when I watched you milk the cows,
their sweet breath filling the dark barn as the rain
that wasn’t expected sluiced through the rain gutters.
I waited for you to speak the loud familiar words
about the weather, the failed crops—
I would have talked then, too loud, stroking the Holstein
moving against her stanchion—
but there was only the rain on the tin roof,
and the steady swish-swish of milk into the bright bucket
as I walked past you, so close we could have touched.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by J.T. Ledbetter, and reprinted from his most recent book of poetry, Underlying Premises, Lewis Clark Press, 2010, by permission of J.T. Ledbetter and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-10-19T20:59:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 343

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Most of us have received the delayed news of the death of a family member or friend, and perhaps have reflected on lost opportunities. Here’s a fine poem by J. T. Ledbetter, who lives in California but grew up on the Great Plains.

Crossing Shoal Creek

The letter said you died on your tractor
crossing Shoal Creek.
There were no pictures to help the memories fading
like mists off the bottoms that last day on the farm
when I watched you milk the cows,
their sweet breath filling the dark barn as the rain
that wasn’t expected sluiced through the rain gutters.
I waited for you to speak the loud familiar words
about the weather, the failed crops—
I would have talked then, too loud, stroking the Holstein
moving against her stanchion—
but there was only the rain on the tin roof,
and the steady swish-swish of milk into the bright bucket
as I walked past you, so close we could have touched.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by J.T. Ledbetter, and reprinted from his most recent book of poetry, Underlying Premises, Lewis Clark Press, 2010, by permission of J.T. Ledbetter and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-10-11T17:38:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 342

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Your high school English teacher made an effort to teach you and your bored classmates about sonnets, which have specific patterns of rhyme, and he or she used as an example a great poem by Keats or Shelley, about some heroic subject. To counter the memory of those long and probably tedious hours, I offer you this perfectly made sonnet by Roy Scheele, a Nebraska poet, about a more humble, common subject.

Woman Feeding Chickens

Her hand is at the feedbag at her waist,
sunk to the wrist in the rustling grain
that nuzzles her fingertips when laced
around a sifting handful. It’s like rain,
like cupping water in your hand, she thinks,
the cracks between the fingers like a sieve,
except that less escapes you through the chinks
when handling grain. She likes to feel it give
beneath her hand’s slow plummet, and the smell,
so rich a fragrance she has never quite
got used to it, under the seeming spell
of the charm of the commonplace. The white
hens bunch and strut, heads cocked, with tilted eyes,
till her hand sweeps out and the small grain flies.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Roy Scheele from his most recent book of poetry, A Far Allegiance, The Backwaters Press, 2010. Reprinted by permission of Roy Scheele and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-09-28T12:01:00.000-04:00

by David Graham

The Dogs In Dutch Paintings

How shall I not love them, snoozing
right through the Annunciation? They inhabit
the outskirts of every importance, sprawl
dead center in each oblivious household.

They're digging at fleas or snapping at scraps,
dozing with noble abandon while a boy
bells their tails. Often they present their rumps
in the foreground of some martyrdom.

What Christ could lean so unconcernedly
against a table leg, the feast above continuing?
Could the Virgin in her joy match this grace
as a hound sagely ponders an upturned turtle?

No scholar at his huge book will capture
my eye so well as the skinny haunches,
the frazzled tails and serene optimism
of the least of these mutts, curled

in the corners of the world's dazzlement.

-- Stutter Monk. Flume Press, 2000.

2011-09-25T18:34:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 339

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

People have been learning to cook since our ancient ancestors discovered fire, and most of us learn from somebody who knows how. I love this little poem by Daniel Nyikos of Utah, for its contemporary take on accepting directions from an elder, from two elders in this instance.

Potato Soup

I set up my computer and webcam in the kitchen
so I can ask my mother’s and aunt’s advice
as I cook soup for the first time alone.
My mother is in Utah. My aunt is in Hungary.
I show the onions to my mother with the webcam.
“Cut them smaller,” she advises.
“You only need a taste.”
I chop potatoes as the onions fry in my pan.
When I say I have no paprika to add to the broth,
they argue whether it can be called potato soup.
My mother says it will be white potato soup,
my aunt says potato soup must be red.
When I add sliced peppers, I ask many times
if I should put the water in now,
but they both say to wait until I add the potatoes.
I add Polish sausage because I can’t find Hungarian,
and I cook it so long the potatoes fall apart.
“You’ve made stew,” my mother says
when I hold up the whole pot to the camera.
They laugh and say I must get married soon.
I turn off the computer and eat alone.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Daniel Nyikos. Reprinted by permission of Daniel Nyikos. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-08-29T11:51:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 336

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

This week’s column is by Ladan Osman, who is originally from Somalia but who now lives in Chicago. I like “Tonight” for the way it looks with clear eyes at one of the rough edges of American life, then greets us with a hopeful wave.

Tonight

Tonight is a drunk man,
his dirty shirt.

There is no couple chatting by the recycling bins,
offering to help me unload my plastics.

There is not even the black and white cat
that balances elegantly on the lip of the dumpster.

There is only the smell of sour breath. Sweat on the collar of my shirt.
A water bottle rolling under a car.
Me in my too-small pajama pants stacking juice jugs on neighbors’ juice jugs.

I look to see if there is someone drinking on their balcony.

I tell myself I will wave.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Ladan Osman, and reprinted by permission of the poet. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-08-22T13:56:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 335

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I’ve always been fascinated by miniatures of all kinds, the little glass animals I played with as a boy, electric trains, dollhouses, and I think it’s because I can feel that I’m in complete control. Everything is right in its place, and I’m the one who put it there. Here’s a poem by Kay Mullen, who lives in Washington, about the art of bonsai.

Bonsai at the Potter's Stall

Under fluorescent light,
aligned on a bench

and table top, oranges
the size of marbles dangle

from trees with glossy
leaves. White trumpets

bloom in tiny clay pots.
Under a firethorn’s twisted

limbs, a three inch monk
holds a cup from which

he appears to drink
the interior life. The potter

prizes his bonsai children
who will never grow up,

never leave home.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Kay Mullen, and reprinted from her most recent book of poetry, A Long Remembering: Return to Vietnam, FootHills Publishing, 2006, by permission of Kay Mullen and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-08-15T23:26:00.002-04:00

by David Graham

Scotch Movies

I like to see the old couple sitting

in their garage right on Route 23

with the door up, facing traffic

on a warm June day, newspaper unread,

as if we were the interesting ones

in our dog-to-the-vet station wagons,

our UPS vans so faithfully frantic,

first-gear dumptrucks groaning with gravel,

when the Mystery itself

has set up its twin folding chairs

in the dusky, oil-scented air,

iced tea slowly warming on a card table

between them, maybe a radio on soft

in the empty kitchen behind. I like

to believe they speak at long intervals

about how the tomatoes are doing,

heat beginning to ripple the haze

over the highway, through which we plunge

with our designer coffee, our kids in car seats,

clutch of DVDs to return to the store

where they have never been, our couple

nodding like trees at the edge of the wind.

--from Poet's Corner: Summer. Ed. Anny Ballardini. Published July 2009.

2011-08-08T21:42:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 333

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Here is a lovely poem by Robert Cording, a poet who lives in Connecticut, which shows us a fresh new way of looking at something commonplace. That’s the kind of valuable service a poet can provide.

Old Houses

Year after year after year
I have come to love slowly

how old houses hold themselves—

before November’s drizzled rain
or the refreshing light of June—

as if they have all come to agree
that, in time, the days are no longer
a matter of suffering or rejoicing.

I have come to love
how they take on the color of rain or sun
as they go on keeping their vigil

without need of a sign, awaiting nothing

more than the birds that sing from the eaves,
the seizing cold that sounds the rafters.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Robert Cording from his most recent book of poetry, Walking with Ruskin, CavanKerry Press, Ltd., 2010. Reprinted by permission of Robert Cording. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-08-07T12:40:00.000-04:00

by David Graham

On Finding My Father Still in My Address Book

Two years since he died, ten since his last email,
I fight the urge to email him, knowing how I'll feel
when it bounces. Better to imagine him perched
at his old computer with instruction manual laid out
on the desk, carefully making his way number to number
down the list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Almost every night I look up at the moon,
the few constellations I can identify, and think
of him sweeping his arm horizon to horizon,
explaining that dome of glitter above us.
I've forgotten most of it besides Orion, Polaris,
the Great and Minor Bears. But his steady voice
enters my dream like conversation in a room
next door, parents going over their day as the lamp
slowly cools and stars appear out the window.

No words I can make out, but a sound I like to listen for
nonetheless. You are my most frequently asked
question, Dad. The answer, too, I guess.

--from Poemeleon 5.1 (Winter 2010/11)

2011-08-04T22:48:00.000-04:00

by David Graham

Between Classes

There's nothing worse than old people talking about sex.
--student, overheard in the hallway

Nothing worse than your lumpy baggage,
flabby duffels and bulging roll-ons
with burst seams and scuffed straps, passports
all smudged with vanished holiday.

Nothing worse than being criss-crossed
with scars you see and those you don't,
some moss-eyed gargoyle in the mirror
having so little to do
with your former cool stream self.

So cover your love with cloudy comforter,
turn the dark down a few notches,
and be quiet about it, please--nothing worse
than those baby sounds from your throats
taking animal pleasure from time.

How dare you strut that mothball stuff
across our dance floor--don't you know
why your babies' tongues are pierced?
Can't you read the ink on our icebright skin?

No one wants the blood lecture,
the arid anecdote. Don't you remember
this radiator hiss of wisdom
in dusty afternoon? Nothing sadder
than a wrinkled hipster, still groping
the lingo hopefully, fingering the clothes,
doing that clunk-kneed cha-cha in full view.

Don't be spilling your mess of coffee grounds
and apple peels in our sun. . . . You should
practice safe sex, Sir, in the dumpster
of your mind, all overripe with vocabulary.

-from TriQuarterly 128 (2007).

2011-07-30T18:17:00.004-04:00

by David Graham

Sea Turtle

Deep in your oyster-size brain
is a hatred for sharks,
hunger for jellyfish and crabs,
perfect memory for the sands
of the hatching beach.

You're bad luck, with that barnacle mouth,
plucking ice age sponges
from bottom mud, nearsighted cooter
of the coral reefs. They say
you drum a storm on boat decks.

But you'll die lunging after plastic bags,
jaw thick with fishhooks
you've eaten the bait from.
Your young will crawl toward the light
they think is moonlit sea--

pavement glittering with headlights.
A jeep will eat the eggs
ghost crabs cannot find. You'll butt
your nose raw on aquarium walls,
snap dangled fingers like snailshells.

With breath so foul the shrimp-men gag,
a limitless gut, carapace
sharp to slice their nets
and free a day's catch, you're swimming
to beaches that have washed away.

They say turtle steak won't rest
in the pan, that it takes you
a week to die. They have seen you,
three-legged from old shark bites,
climb crookedly out of the surf

straight into a poacher's machete.
They have seen you headless, dropping eggs.

-from David Graham's Magic Shows. Cleveland State University Poetry Center. 1986.

2011-07-23T16:40:00.005-04:00

by Sandra Lindow

Trich Nhat Hanh on Tyler Avenue

Turning sunward out of the driveway,

Miriam and I in Sunday best,

Are swirled within a cloud

Of dazzling gold and crimson leaves;

I touch my daughter's hand and say,

"Look at that tree, see how the sunlight

Breaks into pieces and falls."

And I am reminded how Master

Thich Nhat Hanh describes papermaking‑‑

Poets see paper as floating clouds:

Without a cloud, there is no rain;

Without the rain, there is no tree;

Without a tree, you cannot make paper.

So a cloud exists within each page,

Each poem written on cloud and sun and wood,

Each word, part of the earth,

Each letter, part of the face of God.

-originally appeared in Wisconsin Poets Calendar 1995.

2011-07-20T14:26:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 330

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Humans first prized horses for their strength and speed, but we have since been captivated by their beauty, their deep eyes and mysterious silences. Here’s a poem by Robert Wrigley, who lives in Idaho, where the oldest fossilized remains of the modern horse were found.

After a Rainstorm

Because I have come to the fence at night,
the horses arrive also from their ancient stable.
They let me stroke their long faces, and I note
in the light of the now-merging moon

how they, a Morgan and a Quarter, have been
by shake-guttered raindrops
spotted around their rumps and thus made
Appaloosas, the ancestral horses of this place.

Maybe because it is night, they are nervous,
or maybe because they too sense
what they have become, they seem
to be waiting for me to say something

to whatever ancient spirits might still abide here,
that they might awaken from this strange dream,
in which there are fences and stables and a man
who doesn’t know a single word they understand.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Robert Wrigley from his most recent book of poetry, Beautiful Country, Penguin Books, 2010. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-07-06T14:17:00.001-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 328

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

How I love poems in which there is evidence of a poet paying close attention to the world about him. Here Angelo Giambra, who lives in Florida, has been keeping an eye on the bees.

The Water Carriers

On hot days we would see them
leaving the hive in swarms. June and I
would watch them weave their way
through the sugarberry trees toward the pond
where they would stop to take a drink,
then buzz their way back, plump and full of water,
to drop it on the backs of the fanning bees.
If you listened you could hear them, their tiny wings
beating in unison as they cooled down the hive.
My brother caught one once, its bulbous body
bursting with water, beating itself against
the smooth glass wall of the canning jar.
He lit a match, dropped it in, but nothing
happened. The match went out and the bee
swam through the mix of sulfur and smoke
until my brother let it out. It flew straight
back to the hive. Later, we skinny-dipped
in the pond, the three of us, the August sun
melting the world around us as if it were
wax. In the cool of the evening, we walked
home, pond water still dripping from our skin,
glistening and twinkling like starlight.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Angelo Giambra, whose most recent book of poetry is Oranges and Eggs, Finishing Line Press, 2010. Poem reprinted from the South Dakota Review, Vol. 47, no. 4, Winter 2009, by permission of Angelo Giambra and publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-07-04T11:49:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 328

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I don’t often mention literary forms, but of this lovely poem by Cecilia Woloch I want to suggest that the form, a villanelle, which uses a pattern of repetition, adds to the enchantment I feel in reading it. It has a kind of layering, like memory itself. Woloch lives and teaches in southern California.

My Mother's Pillow

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow.

For years her hands were quick with thread and needle.
She used to sew all night when we were little;
now she sleeps with the Bible on her pillow

and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow:
her children grown, their father frail and brittle;
she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow.

Once she even slept fast, rushed tomorrow,
mornings full of sunlight, sons and daughters.
Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow

and wakes alone and feels the house is hollow,
though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters;
she listens to him breathe: each breath is shallow.

I flutter down the darkened hallway, shadow
between their dreams, my mother and my father,
asleep in rooms I pass, my breathing shallow.
I leave the Bible open on her pillow.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2003 by Cecilia Woloch, whose most recent book of poetry is Narcissus, Tupelo Press, 2008. Reprinted from Late, by Cecilia Woloch, published by BOA Editions, Rochester, NY, 2003, by permission of Cecilia Woloch. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-06-27T22:55:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 327

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Some of us have more active fantasy lives than others, but all of us have them. Here Karin Gottshall, who lives in Vermont, shares a variety of loneliness that some of our readers may have experienced.

More Lies

Sometimes I say I’m going to meet my sister at the café—
even though I have no sister—just because it’s such
a beautiful thing to say. I’ve always thought so, ever since

I read a novel in which two sisters were constantly meeting
in cafés. Today, for example, I walked alone
on the wet sidewalk, wearing my rain boots, expecting

someone might ask where I was headed. I bought
a steno pad and a watch battery, the store windows
fogged up. Rain in April is a kind of promise, and it costs

nothing. I carried a bag of books to the café and ordered
tea. I like a place that’s lit by lamps. I like a place
where you can hear people talk about small things,

like the difference between azure and cerulean,
and the price of tulips. It’s going down. I watched
someone who could be my sister walk in, shaking the rain

from her hair. I thought, even now florists are filling
their coolers with tulips, five dollars a bundle. All over
the city there are sisters. Any one of them could be mine.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Karin Gottshall, whose most recent book of poetry is Crocus, Fordham University Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from the New Ohio Review, No. 8, Fall 2010, by permission of Karin Gottshall and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-06-19T13:35:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 324

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Here’s a fine poem by my fellow Nebraskan, Barbara Schmitz, who here offers us a picture of people we’ve all observed but haven’t thought to write about.

Uniforms

It is very hot—92 today—to be wearing
a stocking cap, but the adolescent swaggering
through the grocery store automatic door
doesn’t seem to mind; does not even appear
to be perspiring. The tugged-down hat
is part of his carefully orchestrated outfit:
bagging pants, screaming t-shirt, high-topped
shoes. The young woman who yells to her friends
from an open pickup window is attired
for summer season in strapless stretch
tube top, slipping down toward bountiful
cleavage valley. She tugs it up in front
as she races toward the two who have
just passed a cigarette between them
like a baton on a relay team. Her white
chest gleams like burnished treasure
as they giggle loudly there in the corner
and I glance down to see what costume
I have selected to present myself to
the world today. I smile; it’s my sky blue
shirt with large deliberately faded Peace sign,
smack dab in the middle, plus grey suede
Birkenstocks—a message that “I lived through
the sixties and am so proud.” None of the
young look my way. I round the corner and

walk into Evening descending.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Barbara Schmitz, whose most recent book of poems is How Much Our Dancing Has Improved, Backwaters Press, 2005. Poem reprinted from the South Dakota Review, Vol. 47, no. 3, 2009, by permission of Barbara Schmitz and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-05-29T15:41:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 322

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Cathy Smith Bowers was recently appointed poet laureate of North Carolina, and I want to celebrate her appointment by showing you one of her lovely poems, a peaceful poem about a peaceful thing.

Peace Lilies

I collect them now, it seems. Like
sea-shells or old
thimbles. One for
Father. One for

Mother. Two for my sweet brothers.
Odd how little
they require of
me. Unlike the

ones they were sent in memory
of. No sudden
shrilling of the
phone. No harried

midnight flights. Only a little
water now and
then. Scant food and
light. See how I’ve

brought them all together here in
this shaded space
beyond the stairs.
Even when they

thirst, they summon me with nothing
more than a soft,
indifferent furl-
ing of their leaves.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2004 by Cathy Smith Bowers, whose most recent book of poetry is The Candle I Hold Up to See You, Iris Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from A Book of Minutes, Iris Press, 2004, by permission of Cathy Smith Bowers and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-05-17T00:19:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 321

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

For me, the most worthwhile poetry is that which reaches out and connects with a great number of people, and this one, by Joe Mills of North Carolina, does just that. Every parent gets questions like the one at the center of this poem.

How You Know

How do you know if it’s love? she asks,
and I think if you have to ask, it’s not,
but I know this won’t help. I want to say
you’re too young to worry about it,
as if she has questions about Medicare
or social security, but this won’t help either.
“You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth,
“when you still want to be with them
the next morning,” would involve too
many follow-up questions. The difficulty
with love, I want to say, is sometimes
you only know afterwards that it’s arrived
or left. Love is the elephant and we
are the blind mice unable to understand
the whole. I want to say love is this
desire to help even when I know I can’t,
just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars,
the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes,
fingernails, coconuts, or the other things
she has asked about over the years, all
those phenomena whose daily existence
seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head.
I don’t even know how to match my socks.
Go ask your mother. She laughs and says,
I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

2011-05-09T14:01:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 320

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

When I was a little boy, the fear of polio hung over my summers, keeping me away from the swimming pool. Atomic energy was then in its infancy. It had defeated Japan and seemed to be America’s friend. Jehanne Dubrow, who lives and teaches in Maryland, is much younger than I, and she grew up under the fearsome cloud of what atomic energy was to become.

Chernobyl Year

We dreamed of glowing children,
their throats alive and cancerous,
their eyes like lightning in the dark.

We were uneasy in our skins,
sixth grade, a year for blowing up,
for learning that nothing contains

that heat which comes from growing,
the way our parents seemed at once
both tall as cooling towers and crushed

beneath the pressure of small things—
family dinners, the evening news,
the dead voice of the dial tone.

Even the ground was ticking.
The parts that grew grew poison.
Whatever we ate became a stone.

Whatever we said was love became
plutonium, became a spark
of panic in the buried world.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Jehanne Dubrow, whose most recent book of poems is Stateside, Northwestern Univ. Press, 2010. Poem reprinted from West Branch, No. 66, 2010, by permission of Jehanne Dubrow and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-04-25T15:10:00.001-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 318

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I love poems that take pains to observe people at their tasks, and here’s a fine one by Christopher Todd Matthews, who lives in Virginia.

Window Washer

One hand slops suds on, one

hustles them down like a blind.

Brusque noon glare, filtered thus,

loosens and glows. For five or

six minutes he owns the place,

dismal coffee bar, and us, its

huddled underemployed. A blade,

black line against the topmost glass,

begins, slices off the outer lather,

flings it away, works inward,

corrals the frothy middle, and carves,

with quick cuts, the stuff down,

not looking for anything, beneath

or inside. Homes to the last,

cleans its edges, grooms it for

the end, then shaves it off

and flings it away. Which is

splendid, and merciless. And all

in the wrist. Then, he looks at us.

We makers of filth, we splashers

and spitters. We sitters and watchers.

Who like to see him work.

Who love it when he leaves

and gives it back: our grim hideout,

half spoiled by clarity.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Christopher Todd Matthews, and reprinted from Field, No. 82, 2010, by permission of Christopher Todd Matthews and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-04-18T12:44:00.002-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 317

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Our wars come home, sooner or later. Judith Harris lives in Washington, D.C., and in this poem gives us a veteran of Iraq back among the ordinary activities of American life.

End of Market Day

At five, the market is closing.
Burdock roots, parsley, and rutabagas
are poured back into the trucks.
The antique dealer breaks down his tables.

Light dappled, in winter parkas
shoppers hunt for bargains:
a teapot, or costume jewelry,
a grab bag of rubbishy vegetables for stew.

Now twilight, the farmer’s wife
bundled in her tweed coat and pocket apron
counts out her cash from a metal box,
and nods to her grown-up son

back from a tour in Iraq,
as he waits in the station wagon
with the country music turned way up,
his prosthetic leg gunning the engine.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Judith Harris, whose most recent book of poetry is The Bad Secret, Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Poem reprinted from The Southern Review, Vol. 46, no. 1, 2009, by permission of Judith Harris and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-03-25T17:31:00.005-04:00

By David Salner

WORKING HERE

People who don’t work here
would never dream
what it takes to make iron.
That’s what we said at Eveleth Mines.

We walked a mile of coal-belts
to the tipping point, stared seven-stories down
into a shaft of air suffused with coal,
into the softness of slaked air.

On kiln patrol, marbles of iron
tumbled in a yellow ooze. The heat of hell
turned inches from our heads.
Then we paced a grate the size of a football field

to check each Atlas bearing
with something like a stethoscope
and listen for a telltale scratch
in the forever rolling of the world.

Or, we watched magnetic separators,
the red cones churning through a river
of gray ore. In the West Pit,
we climbed a ladder two stories high

to enter the cab of a loader. The bucket
brushed boulders of ore. It was a finger-flick.
But something about the crusher bothered us.
All over Northern Minnesota, it kept the earth awake,

shift after shift—until they shut it down,
and the whole expanse of grinding and breaking
ground to a halt. Then, everything was quiet
as an April snow. In all the bars,

the distant chatter of people, a sort of silence.
Rumors they’d be calling back
to Eveleth Mines. Rumors, then more silence.
Think back to the noisy world we kept alive

when we did things you’d never dream.
That’s what it took to make iron.

-from Working Here (Rooster Hill Press ) by David Salner. Originally appeared in Poet Lore.

2011-03-23T08:25:00.001-04:00

By Jeanie Tomasko

The End of Dawn

A slant of pink is cradled just below
Your collarbone. It rises slightly when
You breathe, then falls. I kiss this light. I know
It is not mine to keep, but morning’s been

That way, so full of dreams. There was a time
I would have died for wings, but now to watch
You sleep is heaven. I do not want to fly.
The birds outside begin to talk of such

Ideas. Let them have their songs, their flight.
All night it stormed and I awoke to say
My prayers to gods of old—Desire and Light;
That they might change the world so I could stay.

The end of dawn and songs of birds and pain
Are more acute on mornings after rain.

-Originally appeared in The Midwest Quarterly

2011-03-02T15:22:00.002-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 310

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

A friend saw a refrigerator magnet that read, PARENTING: THE FIRST 40 YEARS ARE THE HARDEST. And lots of parents, thinking their children have moved on, discover one day that those children are back. Here Marilyn L. Taylor, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, writes of that.

Home Again, Home Again

The children are back, the children are back—

They’ve come to take refuge, exhale and unpack;

The marriage has faltered, the job has gone bad,

Come open the door for them, Mother and Dad.

The city apartment is leaky and cold,

The landlord lascivious, greedy and old—

The mattress is lumpy, the oven’s encrusted,

The freezer, the fan, and the toilet have rusted.

The company caved, the boss went broke,

The job and the love affair, all up in smoke.

The anguish of loneliness comes as a shock—

O heart in the doldrums, O heart in hock.

And so they return with their piles of possessions,

Their terrified cats and their mournful expressions,

Reclaiming the bedrooms they had in their teens,

Clean towels, warm comforter, glass figurines.

Downstairs in the kitchen the father and mother

Don’t say a word, but they look at each other

As down from the hill comes Jill, comes Jack.

The children are back. The children are back.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Marilyn L. Taylor, whose most recent book of poetry is Going Wrong, Parallel Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from Wisconsin Poets Laureate, Marsh River Editions, 2009, by permission of Marilyn L. Taylor and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-02-16T17:25:00.001-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 307

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I like this poem by 97-year-old Lois Beebe Hayna of Colorado for the way it captures restrained speech. The speaker spends most of her words in describing a season, but behind the changes of spring another significant change is suggested.

Brief Eden

For part of one strange year we lived
in a small house at the edge of a wood.
No neighbors, which suited us. Nobody
to ask questions. Except
for the one big question we went on
asking ourselves.
That spring
myriads of birds stopped over
briefly. Birds we’d never seen before, drawn
to our leafy quiet and our brook and because,
as we later learned, the place lay beneath
a flyway. Flocks appeared overnight—birds
brilliant or dull, with sharp beaks
or crossed bills, birds small
and enormous, all of them pausing
to gorge at the feeder, to rest their wings,
and disappear. Each flock seemed surer than we
of a destination. By the time we’d watched them
wing north in spring, then make
an anxious autumn return,
we too had pulled it together and we too moved
into what seemed to be our lives.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Lois Beebe Hayna, whose most recent book of poems is Keeping Still, Higganum Hill Books, 2005. Poem reprinted from The Greensboro Review, No. 86, Fall 2009, by permission of Lois Beebe Hayna and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-02-14T00:01:00.004-05:00

by Robin Chapman

The Half Glass
-for Will

Some see it half empty, some half full.
This one you bring to me
Is half of the glass of beer we agreed to share,
Poured into glasses the cheerful waitress has sized to fit.
Our two half-glasses I see have become,
Like this late life with you, not a test of temperament
But the doubled gift
Of a full glass for each.

-From Love and Lust Anthology, Parallel Press (2011)
-Originally appeared in BabelFruit (2009)

2011-02-12T17:47:00.001-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 306

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

My grandmother Moser made wonderful cherry pies from fruit from a tree just across the road from her house, and I have loved fruit trees ever since. A cherry tree is all about giving. Here’s a poem by Nathaniel Perry, who lives in Virginia, giving us an orchard made of words.

Remaking a Neglected Orchard

It was a good idea, cutting away

the vines and ivy, trimming back

the chest-high thicket lazy years

had let grow there. Though it wasn’t for lack

of love for the trees, I’d like to point out.

Years love trees in a way we can’t

imagine. They just don’t use the fruit

like us; they want instead the slant

of sun through narrow branches, the buckshot

of rain on these old cherries. And we,

now that I think on it, want those

things too, we just always and desperately

want the sugar of the fruit, the best

we’ll get from this irascible land:

sweetness we can gather for years,

new stains staining the stains on our hands.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Nathaniel Perry, and reprinted from Gettysburg Review, Vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 2010, by permission of Nathaniel Perry and the publisher. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2011-01-24T16:40:00.001-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 305

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso said that, in his subjects, he kept the joy of discovery, the pleasure of the unexpected. In this poem celebrating Picasso, Tim Nolan, an attorney in Minneapolis, says the world will disclose such pleasures to us, too, if only we pay close attention.

Picasso

How can we believe he did it—

every day—for all those years?

We remember how the musicians

gathered for him—and the prostitutes

arranged themselves the way he wanted—

and even the helmeted monkeys

with their little toy car cerebella—

posed—and the fish on the plate—

remained after he ate the fish—

Bones—What do we do with this

life?—except announce: Joy.

Joy. Joy—from the lead—

to the oil—to the stretch of bright

canvas—stretched—to the end of it all.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Tim Nolan, whose most recent book of poetry is The Sound of It, New Rivers Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from Water~Stone Review, Vol. 11, Fall 2008, by permission of Tim Nolan and the publisher. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.*****************************

2010-12-12T22:47:00.001-05:00

by Don Colburn

HOW TO SAY KWAKIUTL

Imagine a grizzly bear

with frogs in its ears and a raven

perched on its head. It helps

to have watched a great heron

at the ragged edge of the sea

before it flaps and somehow

lifts off. Or if, in the dark,

you can make out a yellow cedar

bending to the water – maybe.

Like the wind, the rain, the rings

in the treetrunk the great bear

was carved from, or a sound

you hear for the first time, so old

you know it tells more than one

story: Quawquawkeewogwah.

No use squinting at the scant

letters or sounding them out.

Listen to one who hears his name

without looking. Close your eyes.

Say what he knew by heart.

(from As If Gravity Were a Theory, Cider Press Review, 2006).

2010-12-11T18:44:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 287

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I love to sit outside and be very still until some little creature appears and begins to go about its business, and here is another poet, Robert Gibb, of Pennsylvania, doing just the same thing.

For the Chipmunk in My Yard

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over. All afternoon
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
While all about him the great fields tumble
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky
To be where he is, wild with all that happens.
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. From What the Heart Can Bear by Robert Gibb. Poem copyright ©2009 by Robert Gibb. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-12-10T23:22:00.001-05:00

by John L. Campbell

INSOMNIA

Chocolate coated vowels in four letter verbs
traipse across my bedroom ceiling, Gaelic
conjugations, St. Michael with muddy feet.
With my eyes closed it’s so quiet I hear
my soft slippers whispering to sandals
under my bed, KEENS itching for a walk.
They swap the smell of their souls, tongues
flap behind loose laced lips, tread rugs,
carpet, and ceramic tile where their steps
leave tracks on abrasive roads, trace
rubber and leather, one by man, one by God.
Y does a melt-down miffed at not being
voted the sixth vowel, tracking in sticky
dark chocolate, words reading, “Get up,
grab a pencil n’ pad, jot this down.”

-First published in Verse Wisconsin Issue # 104 October 2010

2010-12-02T18:09:00.002-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 285

  BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

 In our busy times, the briefest pause to express a little interest in the natural world is praiseworthy. Most of us spend our time thinking about other people, and scarcely any time thinking about other creatures. I recently co-edited an anthology of poems about birds, and we looked through lots of books and magazines, but here is a fine poem we missed, byTara Bray, who lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Once

I climbed the roll of hay to watch the heron
 in the pond. He waded a few steps out,
 then back, thrusting his beak under water, 
pulling it up empty, but only once.
 Later I walked the roads for miles, certain
 he’d be there when I returned. How is it for him,
 day after day, his brittle legs rising
 from warm green scum, his graceful neck curled, 
damp in the bright heat? It’s a dull world.
 Every day, the same roads, the sky,
 the dust, the barn caving into itself, 
the tin roof twisted and scattered in the yard. 
Again, the bank covered with oxeye daisy
 that turns to spiderwort, to chicory,
 and at last to goldenrod. Each year, the birds—
 thick in the air and darting in wild numbers—
 grow quiet, the grasses thin, the light leaves 
earlier each day. The heron stood 
stone-still on my spot when I returned.
 And then, his wings burst open, lifting the steel- 
blue rhythm of his body into flight. 
I touched the warm hay. Hoping for a trace
 of his wild smell, I cupped my hands over
 my face: nothing but the heat of fields 
and skin. It wasn’t long before the world 
began to breathe the beat of ordinary hours, 
stretching out again beneath the sky.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Tara Bray, and reprinted from her most recent book of poems, Mistaken for Song, Persea Books, Inc., 2009, by permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
***************

2010-08-30T12:22:00.001-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 284  

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I’d guess there are lots of people, like me, who sometimes visit places which in memory are hallowed but which, through time, have been changed irreparably. It is a painful experience but it underlines life. Here Carl Little, who lives in Maine, returns to a place like that. 

The Clearing

The sunbox lies in pieces,
 its strips of aluminum foil
 flaking away to the wind,
 tanning platform broken up
 for kindling. Planted grass  
sprouts where the path
once  sharply turned to the left
 circumventing underbrush,
 there the man (a boy then)
 stumbled on beauty’s wrath:
 pale sisters yelling him off,  
scrambling for clothes to cover.  

All has been cleared, thick
 cat briar raked into piles  
and set ablaze, invincible
 ailanthus stacked for dump.  
All’s clear and calm save
 his childhood rushing head-
 long through tearing thickets,  
and the sisters, barely glimpsed  
against reflective flashing,
laughing after him, then
 lying back to catch
 all the sullen autumn sun they can.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Carl Little and reprinted from Ocean Drinker: New and Selected Poems, Deerbrook Editions, 2006, by permission of Carl Little and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************

2010-08-02T13:13:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 280
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Marilyn Kallet lives and teaches in Tennessee. Over the years I have read many poems about fireflies, but of all of them hers seems to offer the most and dearest peace.

Fireflies

In the dry summer field at nightfall,
fireflies rise like sparks.
Imagine the presence of ghosts
flickering, the ghosts of young friends,
your father nearest in the distance.
This time they carry no sorrow,
no remorse, their presence is so light.
Childhood comes to you,
memories of your street in lamplight,
holding those last moments before bed,
capturing lightning-bugs,
with a blossom of the hand
letting them go. Lightness returns,
an airy motion over the ground
you remember from Ring Around the Rosie.
If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies
again, not part of your stories,
as unaware of you as sleep, being
beautiful and quiet all around you.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Marilyn Kallet, from her most recent book of poetry, Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, Black Widow Press, 2009. Reprinted by permission of Marilyn Kallet. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-07-20T18:51:00.002-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 278
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Peter Everwine is a California poet whose work I have admired for almost as long as I have been writing. Here he beautifully captures a quiet moment of reflection.

Rain

Toward evening, as the light failed
and the pear tree at my window darkened,
I put down my book and stood at the open door,
the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,
a smell of wet clay in the wind.
Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,
half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain
drummed against our tent, I heard
for the first time a loon’s sudden wail
drifting across that remote lake—
a loneliness like no other,
though what I heard as inconsolable
may have been only the sound of something
untamed and nameless
singing itself to the wilderness around it
and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father
and of good companions gone
into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain
and the soft lapping of water, and did not know
whether it was grief or joy or something other
that surged against my heart
and held me listening there so long and late.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Peter Everwine, whose most recent book of poems is From the Meadow: Selected and New Poems, Pitt Poetry Series, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. Reprinted from Ploughshares, Vol. 34, no. 1, Spring 2008, by permission of Peter Everwine and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-06-28T13:17:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 275
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I recognize the couple who are introduced in this poem by Patricia Frolander, of Sundance, Wyoming, and perhaps you’ll recognize them, too.

Denial

He called it “his ranch,”
yet each winter day found her beside him
feeding hay to hungry cows.

In summer heat
you would find her in the hayfield—
cutting, raking, baling, stacking.

In between she kept the books,
cooked, cleaned
laundered, fed bum lambs.

Garden rows straight,
canned jars of food
lined cellar walls.

Then she died.
I asked him how he would manage.
“Just like I always have,” he said.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Patricia Frolander, and reprinted from her most recent book of poems, Grassland Genealogy, Finishing Line Press, 2009, by permission of Pat Frolander and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-06-21T14:14:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 274
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is one of our country’s finest poets. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey. I thought that today you might like to have us offer you a poem full of blessings.

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other
dogs can smell it

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog” from The Book of Seventy, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, © 2009. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-05-31T11:13:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 271
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Barnyard chickens, which are little more than reptiles with feathers, can be counted on to kill those among them who are malformed or diseased, but we humans, advanced animals that we think we are, are far more likely to just turn away from people who bear the scars of misfortune. Here’s a poem by Ned Balbo, who lives and teaches in Maryland.

Fire Victim

Once, boarding the train to New York City,
The aisle crowded and all seats filled, I glimpsed
An open space—more pushing, stuck in place—
And then saw why: a man, face peeled away,
Sewn back in haste, skin grafts that smeared like wax
Spattered and frozen, one eye flesh-filled, smooth,
One cold eye toward the window. Cramped, shoved hard,
I, too, passed up the seat, the place, and fought on
Through to the next car, and the next, but now
I wonder why the fire that could have killed him
Spared him, burns scarred over; if a life
Is what he calls this space through which he moves,
Dark space we dared not enter, and what fire
Burns in him when he sees us move away.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2005 by Ned Balbo, whose most recent book of poetry is Something Must Happen, Finishing Line Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from Lives of the Sleepers, University of Notre Dame Press, 2005, by permission of Ned Balbo and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

****************************

2010-05-30T00:08:00.001-04:00

By Dan Veach

Return to Cinder

Nature is a Heraclitean Fire
—Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mail strike, and the Italian Post

is buried like Pompeii.

On the evening news, dispirited

Post officers kick listlessly

through the mountains and foothills

of the undelivered.

Will it be cheaper, they wonder

to shred it or burn it?

All those delicate air mail envelopes

blue as Italian sky, their crinkly onion skin

desiccated and ethereal, last stop

between matter and spirit.

Failed reachings-out of business and delight—

trapeze artists inches short

of an outstretched hand.

And Love, of course: its labors

lost for good. Struck since with sober

second thoughts, the cowardice

of common sense. Vesuvius slowly

losing steam. The heart a volcanic rock.

The Dead Letter Office

takes things philosophically.

They shrug. The situation is not dire.

In their postal manual, Heraclitus says

that all creation bears the same return address.

Now or in a thousand years, who cares?

Send it back to the Fire.

-from Southern Poetry Review, Vol. 47, No. 1

2010-04-29T11:41:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 266
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.

The Yellow Bowl

If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,

and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Rachel Contreni Flynn, whose newest book, Tongue, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Reprinted from Haywire, Bright Hill Press, 2009, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn and the publisher. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-04-27T16:41:00.000-04:00

by Dan Veach

Millers

Small, unassuming, dusty gold,

their wings swept back like jets,

we called them “millers”

years before I heard

of human mills and millers.

Little skippers built for speed,

you had to be lucky and lightening quick

to catch one. When released,

they left a fairy powder

on our fingers, flecks of gold

more finely divided than dust.

I knew what it meant to catch a fleeting thing

before they ever taught me how to grind

the flour of the word. Before I ever heard

of Chaucer’s miller, windmills,

Don Quixote’s reckless charge—

before I ever threw myself, headlong

against the whirling beauty of the world.

-from Cortland Review, August 2009

2010-04-19T16:21:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 265
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Tell a whiny child that she sounds like a broken record, and she’s likely to say, “What’s a record?” Jeff Daniel Marion, a Tennessee poet, tells us not only what 78 rpm records were, but what they meant to the people who played them, and to those who remember the people who played them.

78 RPM

In the back of the junkhouse
stacked on a cardtable covered
by a ragged bedspread, they rest,
black platters whose music once
crackled, hissed with a static
like shuffling feet, fox trot or two-step,
the slow dance of the needle
riding its merry-go-round,
my mother’s head nestled
on my father’s shoulder as they
turned, lost in the sway of sounds,
summer nights and faraway
places, the syncopation of time
waltzing them to a world
they never dreamed, dance
of then to the dust of now.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Jeff Daniel Marion. Reprinted from his most recent book of poems, Father, Wind Publications, 2009, by permission of Jeff Daniel Marion and the publisher. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-03-28T18:49:00.003-04:00

by Marilyn Annucci

Whole Foods

are so much better than little bits, little chewed off

pieces of foods one might leave for a bird or a woman

without a home. Not whole, as in lacking parts: broccoli

without heads, potatoes missing eyes. Maimed foods.

Pork chops on their last legs. Tomatoes with their skins

blown off. Bread crumbs. The whole crumby world out

there, not in here. Whole, as in what more could you ask

for: bright organic peppers in the jet of the spritzer. Crisp

stalks of celery, fennel, white asparagus. Complete, as in

all of us together, smiling, restored, fully realized as we reach

for that tiramisu. Rich, as in not poor, not stuck with radiated

beef, milk, mutated chickens, as in not free, not free-range at all.

-published as “The [Failed] Ghost Copy Writer: Whole Foods” in The American Poetry Journal (Number 8, 2008)

2010-03-15T15:30:00.000-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 260
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

This column marks our fifth anniversary, and we send you our thanks for supporting what we try to accomplish here.

These days are brim full of bad news about our economy—businesses closing, people losing their houses, their jobs. If there’s any comfort in a situation like this, it’s in the fact that there’s a big community of sufferers. Here’s a poem by Dana Bisignani, who lives in Indiana, that describes what it feels like to sit through a bankruptcy hearing.

Bankruptcy Hearing

They have us corralled
in the basement of the courthouse.
One desk and a row of folding chairs—
just like first grade, our desks facing Teacher
in neat little rows.

Upstairs,
wooden benches like pews and red
carpet reserved for those who’ve held out
the longest. No creditors have come to claim us
today. We’re small-time.

This guy from the graveyard shift
stares at his steel-toed boots, nervous hands
in his lap. None of us look each other
in the eye. We steal quick looks—how did you
get here. . .

chemo bills, a gambling addiction,
a summer spent unemployed and too many
cash advances to pay the rent.
We examine the pipes that hang
from the ceiling, the scratched tiles on the floor,

the red glow of the exit sign at the end of the hall
so like our other failed escapes:
light of the TV at night,
glass of cheap Merlot beside a lamp,
a stop light on the way out of town.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Dana Bisignani and reprinted from Blue Collar Review, Vol. 12, Issue 2, Winter 2008-2009, by permission of Dana Bisignani and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

2010-03-08T20:37:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 259
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Wisconsin writer Freya Manfred is not only a fine poet but the daughter of the late Frederick Manfred, a distinguished novelist of the American west. Here is a lovely snapshot of her father, whom I cherished among my good friends.

Green Pear Tree in September

On a hill overlooking the Rock River
my father’s pear tree shimmers,
in perfect peace,
covered with hundreds of ripe pears
with pert tops, plump bottoms,
and long curved leaves.
Until the green-haloed tree
rose up and sang hello,
I had forgotten. . .
He planted it twelve years ago,
when he was seventy-three,
so that in September
he could stroll down
with the sound of the crickets
rising and falling around him,
and stand, naked to the waist,
slightly bent, sucking juice
from a ripe pear.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2003 by Freya Manfred. Her most recent book of poems is Swimming With A Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle, Red Dragonfly Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from My Only Home, Red Dragonfly Press, 2003, by permission of Freya Manfred and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-02-22T16:20:00.003-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 257
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Often when I dig some change out of my jeans pocket to pay somebody for something, the pennies and nickels are accompanied by a big gob of blue lint. So it’s no wonder that I was taken with this poem by a Massachusetts poet, Gary Metras, who isn’t embarrassed.

Lint

It doesn’t bother me to have
lint in the bottoms of pant pockets;
it gives the hands something to do,
especially since I no longer hold
shovel, hod, or hammer
in the daylight hours of labor
and haven’t, in fact, done so
in twenty-five years. A long time
to be picking lint from pockets.
Perhaps even long enough to have
gathered sacks full of lint
that could have been put
to good use, maybe spun into yarn
to knit a sweater for my wife’s
Christmas present, or strong thread
whirled and woven into a tweedy jacket.
Imagine entering my classroom
in a jacket made from lint.
Who would believe it?
Yet there are stranger things—
the son of a bricklayer with hands
so smooth they’re only fit
for picking lint.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Gary Metras, whose most recent book of poems is Greatest Hits 1980-2006, Pudding House, 2007. Poem reprinted from Poetry East, Nos. 62 & 63, Fall 2008, by permission of Gary Metras and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-02-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

VALENTINES

by Robin Chapman

In first grade, punching out

The cartoon speakers ballooning "Be mine,"

Laboriously copying names on the backs,

I learned who belonged to my class,

Not to leave anyone out,

And the terror and power of words—

Whether to sign this one ‘from’ or ‘love’;

By fifth, the list mastered,

I concentrated on

The handmade art of the singled-out heart,

Folding the red construction paper in two

And cutting out half of the imagined whole

For a boy I was too shy to speak to,

Worrying over whether I should send

The one that was too skinny or too fat;

And so it went, over the years,

The ones I sent, the ones I read,

The ones signed ‘from’ or ‘love’,

The ones that didn’t come, the ones

I didn’t send, the too-fat, too-skinny

Lopsided ones, the ones I bought myself,

While the real heart in the body beat steadily,

Keeping its faithful pace awake or asleep,

From first breath to last;

unfolding

The morning paper last week to the hungry face

Of the Sudanese mother carrying the bones

Of her starving son on her shoulders,

Heart the only muscle he had left—

No words for the courage and power in her face,

Or the terror of the world,

Though I am frantically cutting out hearts

For every one of us,

All of them signed ‘love.’

2010-02-08T14:27:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 255
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

A honeymoon. How often does one happen according to the dreams that preceded it? In this poem, Wesley McNair, a poet from Maine, describes a first night of marriage in a tawdry place. But all’s well that ends well.

For My Wife

How were we to know, leaving your two kids
behind in New Hampshire for our honeymoon
at twenty-one, that it was a trick of cheap
hotels in New York City to draw customers
like us inside by displaying a fancy lobby?
Arriving in our fourth-floor room, we found
a bed, a scarred bureau, and a bathroom door
with a cut on one side the exact shape
of the toilet bowl that was in its way
when I closed it. I opened and shut the door,
admiring the fit and despairing of it. You
discovered the initials of lovers carved
on the bureau’s top in a zigzag, breaking heart.
How wrong the place was to us then,
unable to see the portents of our future
that seem so clear now in the naiveté
of the arrangements we made, the hotel’s
disdain for those with little money,
the carving of pain and love. Yet in that room
we pulled the covers over ourselves and lay
our love down, and in this way began our unwise
and persistent and lucky life together.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Wesley McNair, whose most recent book of poems is Lovers of the Lost: New and Selected Poems, Godine, 2010. Poem reprinted from Five Points, Vol. 12, no. 3, by permission of Wesley McNair and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2010-02-01T17:41:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 254

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

What might my late parents have thought, I wonder, to know that there would one day be an occupation known as Tooth Painter? Here’s a partial job description by Lucille Lang Day of Oakland, California.

Tooth Painter

He was tall, lean, serious
about his profession,
said it disturbed him
to see mismatched teeth.
Squinting, he asked me
to turn toward the light
as he held an unglazed crown
by my upper incisors.
With a small brush he applied
yellow, gray, pink, violet
and green from a palette of glazes,
then fired it at sixteen hundred
degrees. We went outside
to check the final color,
and he was pleased. Today
the dentist put it in my mouth,
and no one could ever guess
my secret: there’s no one quite
like me, and I can prove it
by the unique shade of
the ivory sculptures attached
to bony sockets in my jaw.
A gallery opens when I smile.
Even the forgery gleams.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Lucille Lang Day and reprinted from The Curvature of Blue, Cervena Barva Press, 2009, by permission of Lucille Lang Day and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

2010-01-25T13:38:00.001-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 253

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Animals are incapable of reason, or so we’ve been told, but we imaginative humans keep talking to our dogs and cats as if they could do algebra. In this poem, Ann Struthers looks into the mystery of instinctive behavior.

Not Knowing Why

Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings,
lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger.
What danger on this island in the middle
of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel
the lift of wind under their iridescent wings,
because they were born to fly,
because they have nothing else to do,
because wind and water are their elements,
their Bach, their Homer, Shakespeare,
and Spielberg. They wheel over the lake,
the little farms, the tourist village with their camera eyes.

In autumn something urges
them toward Texas marshes. They follow
their appetites and instincts, unlike the small beetles
creeping along geometric roads, going toward small boxes,
toward lives as narrow or as wide as the pond,
as glistening or as gray as the sky.
They do not know why. They fly, they fly.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Ann Struthers, whose most recent book of poems is What You Try to Tame, The Coe Review Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from the Coe Review, Vol. 39, no. 1, Fall 2008, by permission of Ann Struthers and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

2010-01-04T13:32:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 250

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I’m very fond of poems that demonstrate their authors’ attentiveness to the world about them, as regular readers of this column have no doubt noticed. Here is a nine-word poem by Joette Giorgis, who lives in Pennsylvania, that is based upon noticing and then thinking about something so ordinary that it might otherwise be overlooked. Even the separate words are flat and commonplace. But so much feeling comes through!

(Untitled)

children grown—
dust accumulates
on half the kitchen table

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Joette Giorgis and reprinted from Modern Haiku, Vol. 40.1, Winter-Spring 2009, by permission of Joette Giorgis and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-12-29T00:04:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 249

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

One of the wonderful things about small children is the way in which they cause us to explain the world. “What’s that?” they ask, and we have to come up with an answer. Here Christine Stewart-Nunez, who lives and teaches in South Dakota, tries to teach her son a new word only to hear it come back transformed.

Convergence

Through the bedroom window
a February sunrise, fog suspended
between pines. Intricate crystals—
hoarfrost lace on a cherry tree.
My son calls out, awake. We sway,
blanket-wrapped, his head nuzzling
my neck. Hoarfrost, tree—I point,
shaping each word. Favorable
conditions: a toddler’s brain, hard
data-mining, a system’s approach.
Hoar, he hears. His hand reaches
to the wallpaper lion. Phenomena
converge: warmth, humidity,
temperature’s sudden plunge;
a child’s brain, objects, sound.
Eyes widening, he opens his mouth
and roars.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Christine Stewart-Nunez, whose most recent book of poems is Postcard on Parchment, ABZ Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from the Briar Cliff Review, 2009, by permission of Christine Stewart-Nunez and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-12-21T17:39:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 248

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Many if not all of us have had the pleasure of watching choruses of young people sing. It’s an experience rich with affirmation, it seems to me. Here is a lovely poem by Tim Nolan, an attorney in Minneapolis.

At the Choral Concert

The high school kids are so beautiful
in their lavender blouses and crisp white shirts.

They open their mouths to sing with that
far-off stare they had looking out from the crib.

Their voices lift up from the marble bed
of the high altar to the blue endless ceiling

of heaven as depicted in the cloudy dome—
and we—as the parents—crane our necks

to see our children and what is above us—
and ahead of us—until the end when we

are invited up to sing with them—sopranos
and altos—tenors and basses—to sing the great

Hallelujah Chorus—and I’m standing with the other
stunned and gray fathers—holding our sheet music—

searching for our parts—and we realize—
our voices are surprisingly rich—experienced—

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth—
and how do we all know to come in

at exactly the right moment?—Forever and ever—
and how can it not seem that we shall reign

forever and ever—in one voice with our beautiful
children—looking out into all those lights.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Tim Nolan from his most recent book, The Sound of It, New Rivers Press, 2008, by permission of the author and publisher. First printed in Ploughshares, Winter 2007-2008. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-12-13T23:44:00.013-05:00

by Andrea Potos
CROCHETING THE SHAWL

Because I don’t know the finishing stitch
for this shawl, I end up at the chain bookstore
under florescent lights, ploughing through
Crocheter’s Companion, Easy to Make Crochet.
What I want is my grandmother
sitting beside me on her Duncan Fyfe sofa.
I want her alive, calling me
Koukla, her needleworked pillows
nested on the cushions,
in air infused with the scents from the open doorway
of her kitchen--olive oil, cinnamon,
oregano, the promise
of abundance.
I need to see her hands once more, age-spotted
and nimble, the fluid motion of her fingers
as natural as singing
or breathing, her voice telling me
how I can
complete this piece without her.

2009-12-07T14:26:00.000-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 246

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Childhood is too precious a part of life to lose before we have to, but our popular culture all too often yanks our little people out of their innocence. Here is a poem by Trish Crapo, of Leyden, Massachusetts, that captures a moment of that innocence.

Back Then

Out in the yard, my sister and I
tore thread from century plants
to braid into bracelets, ate
chalky green bananas,
threw coconuts onto the sidewalk
to crack their hard, hairy skulls.

The world had begun to happen,
but not time. We would live
forever, sunburnt and pricker-stuck,
our promises written in blood. Not yet

would men or illness distinguish us,
our thoughts cleave us in two.
If she squeezed sour calamondins
into a potion, I drank it. When I jumped
from the fig tree, she jumped.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2004 by Trish Crapo and reprinted from Walking Through Paradise Backwards, Slate Roof Press, 2004, by permission of Trish Crapo and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-11-30T13:49:00.003-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 245

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I love the way the following poem by Susie Patlove opens, with the little rooster trying to "be what he feels he must be." This poet lives in Massachusetts, in a community called Windy Hill, which must be a very good place for chickens, too.

Poor Patriarch

The rooster pushes his head
high among the hens, trying to be
what he feels he must be, here
in the confines of domesticity.
Before the tall legs of my presence,
he bristles and shakes his ruby comb.

Little man, I want to say
the hens know who they are.
I want to ease his mistaken burden,
want him to crow with the plain
ecstasy of morning light as it
finds its winter way above the woods.

Poor outnumbered fellow,
how did he come to believe
that on his plumed shoulders
lay the safety of an entire flock?
I run my hand down the rippled
brindle of his back, urge him to relax,
drink in the female pleasures
that surround him, of egg laying,
of settling warm-breasted in the nest
of this brief and feathered time.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2007 by Susie Patlove from Quickening, Slate Roof Press, 2007. Reprinted by permission of Susie Patlove and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-11-23T12:57:00.003-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 244

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Love predated the invention of language, but love poetry got its start as soon as we had words through which to express our feelings. Here’s a lovely example of a contemporary poem of love and longing by George Bilgere, who lives in Ohio.

Night Flight

I am doing laps at night, alone
In the indoor pool. Outside
It is snowing, but I am warm
And weightless, suspended and out
Of time like a fly in amber.

She is thousands of miles
From here, and miles above me,
Ghosting the stratosphere,
Heading from New York to London.
Though it is late, even
At that height, I know her light
Is on, her window a square
Of gold as she reads mysteries
Above the Atlantic. I watch

The line of black tile on the pool’s
Floor, leading me down the lane.
If she looks down by moonlight,
Under a clear sky, she will see
Black water. She will see me
Swimming distantly, moving far
From shore, suspended with her
In flight through the wide gulf
As we swim toward land together.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by George Bilgere, whose most recent book of poems is Haywire, Utah State University Press, 2006. Reprinted by permission of George Bilgere. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-11-17T23:57:00.009-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 243

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Lots of contemporary poems are anecdotal, a brief narration of some event, and what can make them rise above anecdote is when they manage to convey significance, often as the poem closes. Here is an example of one like that, by Marie Sheppard Williams, who lives in Minneapolis.

Everybody

I stood at a bus corner
one afternoon, waiting
for the #2. An old
guy stood waiting too.
I stared at him. He
caught my stare, grinned,
gap-toothed. Will you
sign my coat? he said.
Held out a pen. He wore
a dirty canvas coat that
had signatures all over
it, hundreds, maybe
thousands.
I’m trying
to get everybody, he
said.
I signed. On a
little space on a pocket.
Sometimes I remember:
I am one of everybody.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Marie Sheppard Williams. Reprinted from the California Review, Volume 32, no. 4, by permission of Marie Sheppard Williams and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-11-11T21:11:00.002-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 242

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

There are lots of poems in which a poet expresses belated appreciation for a parent, and if you don’t know Robert Hayden’s poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” you ought to look it up sometime. In this lovely sonnet, Kathy Mangan, of Maryland, contributes to that respected tradition.

The Whistle

You could whistle me home from anywhere
in the neighborhood; avenues away,
I’d pick out your clear, alternating pair
of notes, the signal to quit my child’s play
and run back to our house for supper,
or a Saturday trip to the hardware store.
Unthrottled, wavering in the upper
reaches, your trilled summons traveled farther
than our few blocks. I’ve learned too, how your heart’s
radius extends, though its beat
has stopped. Still, some days a sudden fear darts
through me, whether it’s my own city street
I hurry across, or at a corner in an unknown
town: the high, vacant air arrests me—where’s home?

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1995 by Kathy Mangan, from her most recent book of poems, Above the Tree Line, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1995. Reprinted by permission of Kathy Mangan and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-11-08T12:51:00.002-05:00

by Kelly Madigan Erlandson

Before She Decides

They are in a dark plum thicket

and she is too far above the ground,

can feel the lift and fall of walking

but is not walking. Beneath her

are the shoulders of a boy

who is willing to carry her for years

but he is unsteady as a shirt

unbuttoned in the wind and she

is like a feather on the surface

of a river with round stones

in its bed. She already knows

he will fall and because she is above

him she will fall further

but that doesn’t matter yet, the night

held up all around her

like great bolts of cloth for her choosing.

-originally appeared in Gumball Poetry

2009-11-02T13:31:00.001-05:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 241

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I love poems in which the central metaphors are fresh and original, and here’s a marvelous, coiny description of autumn by Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck, who lives in Illinois.

Like Coins, November

We drove past late fall fields as flat and cold
as sheets of tin and, in the distance, trees

were tossed like coins against the sky. Stunned gold
and bronze, oaks, maples stood in twos and threes:

some copper bright, a few dull brown and, now
and then, the shock of one so steeled with frost

it glittered like a dime. The autumn boughs
and blackened branches wore a somber gloss

that whispered tails to me, not heads. I read
memorial columns in their trunks; their leaves

spelled UNUM, cent; and yours, the only head . . .
in penny profile, Lincoln-like (one sleeve,

one eye) but even it was turning tails
as russet leaves lay spent across the trails.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck. Reprinted from The Spoon River Poetry Review, Vol. XXXIII, no. 1, 2008, by permission of Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

2009-10-19T11:54:00.002-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 239

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway.

Bach in the DC Subway

As an experiment,
The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.

A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-10-12T10:14:00.001-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 238

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Though some teacher may have made you think that all poetry is deadly serious, chock full of coded meanings and obscure symbols, poems, like other works of art, can be delightfully playful. Here Bruce Guernsey, who divides his time between Illinois and Maine, plays with a common yam.

Yam

The potato that ate all its carrots,
can see in the dark like a mole,

its eyes the scars
from centuries of shovels, tines.

May spelled backwards
because it hates the light,

pawing its way, paddling along,
there in the catacombs.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Bruce Guernsey. Reprinted from New England Primer by Bruce Guernsey, Cherry Grove Collections, 2008, by permission of Bruce Guernsey and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-09-28T13:23:00.001-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 236

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Cecilia Woloch teaches in California, and when she’s not with her students she’s off to the Carpathian Mountains of Poland, to help with the farm work. But somehow she resisted her wanderlust just long enough to make this telling snapshot of her father at work.

The Pick

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence,
just watching him.
My father’s body glistened with sweat,
his arms flew like dark wings over his head.
He was turning the backyard into terraces,
breaking the hill into two flat plains.
I took for granted the power of him,
though it frightened me, too.
I watched as he swung the pick into the air
and brought it down hard
and changed the shape of the world,
and changed the shape of the world again.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from When She Named Fire, ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, by permission of Cecilia Woloch and the publisher. The poem first appeared in Sacrifice by Cecilia Woloch, Tebot Bach, 1997. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************

2009-09-22T23:12:00.006-04:00

by Christine Rhein

Orange Days

In the cobalt bowl, oranges gleam: still life

in my kitchen where life is never still.

Even on this quiet afternoon, house to myself,

duties tug at my sleeve, but I sit here scribbling

about indifferent oranges, blue glass neither nest

nor cage. Truth comes down to attitude.

And today I resent keeping the fruit bowl filled,

the time spent choosing in the store, judging

each piece against some noble ideal. So what

if oranges are sweet and good for you?

I’m tired of repeated segments, of partitioning

myself, of being good.

Neruda asked, How do the oranges divide up

sunlight in the orange tree?

Oranges grow round without seeking

admiration, fretting over purpose,

the verb to be their heft, their ample language,

while my alphabet—O for Orange—

leads from one meaning to another,

like orange rind turned to candy.

Like MFK Fisher roasting tangerine crescents

atop a radiator, the scent filling her room

as she waited for the delicate crunch, rush

of juice, words to describe her pleasure:

subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable…

-originally appeared in The MacGuffin

2009-09-21T13:01:00.001-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 235

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I tell my writing students that their most important task is to pay attention to what’s going on around them. God is in the details, as we say. Here David Bottoms, the Poet Laureate of Georgia, tells us a great deal about his father by showing us just one of his hands.

My Father’s Left Hand

Sometimes my old man’s hand flutters over his knee, flaps
in crazy circles, and falls back to his leg.

Sometimes it leans for an hour on that bony ledge.

And sometimes when my old man tries to speak, his hand waggles
in the air, chasing a word, then perches again

on the bar of his walker or the arm of a chair.

Sometimes when evening closes down his window and rain
blackens into ice on the sill, it trembles like a sparrow in a storm.

Then full dark falls, and it trembles less, and less, until it’s still.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Bottoms, whose most recent book of poems is Waltzing Through the Endtime, Copper Canyon Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from Alaska Quarterly Review, Vol. 25, No. 3 & 4, Fall & Winter 2008, by permission of David Bottoms and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************