'Slim as an eel but a solitary glider, a pilot without bombs or weapons'
Nancy Willard, who died in February, was one of my favourite poets, with an enviable gift for inventive description. She published poetry, fiction, essays and children's books, one of which, A Visit to William Blake's Inn, was a winner of the prestigious Newbery award. For those of you who don't have time to read our archive, here's a poem we used with her permission several years ago. There are ...
21st December 2017
'Suddenly an ordinary day becomes holy ground'
This poem by Stella Nesanovich, who lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, appeared in a recent issue of Third Wednesday, a literary journal. At this time of great national division it's good to see a few people in a tire shop, coming together to share their common humanity. Her most recent book is Color...
18th December 2017
'What advice would she offer for life between husbands?'
At a friend's wedding, as she stood in her reception line, an older woman leaned in and whispered, "Always rinse your dishrag in cold water so it won't stink." Advice! Christine Stewart-Nuñez lives ...
11th December 2017
'God's eyes were stained glass, and his voice was pipe organ'
Many of us at some hour have struggled with organised religion, maybe all night, like Jacob wrestling the angel. Here's a fine poem by Fleda Brown, from her book No Need of Sympathy. She is the former...
2nd December 2017
'Bees had radar in their wings and brains that humans could barely understand'
The University of Minnesota Press has published a fine collection of bee poems, If Bees are Few. Here's one by one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye, who lives in San Antonio. Her most recent boo...
27th November 2017
'Feed me, feed me with the only love we know'
I love poems that delightfully offer voices for otherwise mute things, and I like what the following cash register has to say about her life and times. This poem is from Maria Nazos' chapbook, Still L...
21st November 2017
'You think you know them, these creatures robed in your parents' skins'
Do we ever really know our parents, know what they're thinking, know why they do what they do? Here's a poem touching upon those mysteries. It first appeared in Field. Jon Loomis is a poet from Wisc...
9th November 2017
'The fire glowed like a red eye through the furnace door'
Marge Piercy is a distinguished poet who lives in Massachusetts. Her most recent book of poems is Made in Detroit, (Knopf, 2015). I share with her the memory of coal furnaces and clinkers, which when ...
6th November 2017
'Her insistence that the hand return her to the way she was before'
I was deeply moved by this week's poem, which shows us the courage of a person struggling with a disability, one that threatens the way in which she wishes to present herself. It illustrates the fierc...
30th October 2017
'My arms grown taut with the thought of that wind'
Joseph Hutchison has been writing good poems for more than 40 years, and I have been reading them for just that long. He lives in Colorado, where he is the state poet laureate, and his latest book, Th...
23rd October 2017
'Only the girls got to go as the boys were too wild'
Grace Cavalieri, who lives in Washington, DC, has performed a great service for American poetry over the past 40 years with her public radio show, The Poet and the Poem. She's also a playwright and a ...
17th October 2017
'Moving without sound as if charmed by the moon'
Here's a beautiful poem evoking a vivid memory by David Mason, who teaches at Colorado College and has served his state as poet laureate. There's not one extra word in this, and every word - with that...
10th October 2017
'The boys stroke their new muscles, the girls sweeten their lips'
I'm very fond of poems in which the poet stands at a distance from whatever is going on and offers a report. This poem by Dorianne Laux, from her book What We Carry, (BOA Editions), gives us the flavo...
2nd October 2017
'For years we struggled to break free of the closeness of rooms'
Last week we published a poem from Jill Bialosky's new book from Knopf, The Players, and if you didn't see it you can find it on our website. The poet is a New Yorker, an editor at WW Norton, and a da...
25th September 2017
'All day we packed boxes. We read birth and death certificates'
Jill Bialosky is a New Yorker, an editor at WW Norton, and a daughter grieving the loss of loved ones. It's unusual for us to print two poems by one poet, in sequence, but this one and the one I selec...
19th September 2017
'Her beaming face, sunflower-broad, was filled with this thrill'
I've lived in the country for thirty years and during that time my wife and I have hit four deer. All of them leapt away over the nearest fence, unharmed, leaving our cars with hundreds of dollars' wo...
12th September 2017
'The flowers ... will blaze one last time and go out'
We've published several poems from The University of Minnesota Press's collection of bee poems, If Bees Are Few. Here's one about the recent decline in the world's bee population by the distinguished ...
3rd September 2017
'I extract each melodic tooth and sort them in octaves for rinsing'
Just as I prefer to read good travel writing more than I like to travel, I look to poems to offer me experiences I'm quite likely never to have. Here's a poem by Rebecca Macijeski, a native New Englan...
27th August 2017
'Chipped and grubby like old friends with egg on their faces'
Lois Parker Edstrom, a retired nurse, lives on Whidbey island, off the coast of Washington, and her 2016 book Night Beyond Black, from MoonPath Press, has many accessible and moving poems. Here's just...
22nd August 2017
'I extract each melodic tooth and sort them in octaves for rinsing'
Just as I prefer to read good travel writing more than I like to travel, I look to poems to offer me experiences I'm quite likely never to have. Here's a poem by Rebecca Macijeski, a native New Englan...
22nd August 2017
'Trysting in the tall grasses, resting fingers lightly in tousled hair'
Here's a poem celebrating milkweed by Bradford Tice, whose most recent book of poetry is What the Night Numbered, from Trio House Press. Our Monarch butterfly population depends upon milkweed, and per...
14th August 2017
'The white feathers she began to pluck fell all around us'
Poets are experts at capturing those moments when one thing reminds us of another. Here snow reminds Catherine Stearns of something we can imagine took place years before. Stearns lives in Massachuset...
7th August 2017
'Each year he dug, bulldozed, and set fire to those determined vines'
My boyhood home in Iowa was surrounded by honeysuckle bushes that my father sprayed with the hose on summer evenings, and we'd open the windows and have forties air conditioning, a cool damp breeze. H...
31st July 2017
'Like newlyweds, my parents slip out of their clothes'
Here's a lovely poem that imagines the afterlife by Emily Ransdell, who divides her time between Washington and the Oregon coast. This poem appeared first in The Cortland Review.
BOWLING IN H...
23rd July 2017
'With him gone the house had begun to float out onto emptiness'
There are three and a half million of you reading this column in print and online, and I appreciate every one of you. I want to take advantage of your attention to pass along the news of the death of ...
17th July 2017
'We flew through the waves, his hand guiding the tiller'
We've used several of Elise Hempel's poems in this column, and this one is from her latest book from Able Muse Press, Second Rain. To be a child, out for a fast ride in a boat with a father, well, tha...
10th July 2017
'Boys who knew when you were posing, waiting for someone to say, "smile" '
"You can't go home again," said Thomas Wolfe, and you can't put your hand in the same river twice. Change is relentless. But we can still, in memory, go back to where we were. This poem is by P Ivan Y...
3rd July 2017
'I slice as close as I dare to the core'
One of my favourite poems is Louise Bogan's 'The Crossed Apple' which mentions two species, Meadow Milk and Sweet Burning, and since reading it many years ago I have made notes of the names of apples,...
26th June 2017
'Only one hour here stiffens the barbs into thousands of quick retorts'
Kelly Madigan lives in Nebraska and this poem is from her book, The Edge of Known Things, from Stephen F Austin University Press. Did you think that you were all that different from a porcupine? Well,...
15th June 2017
'We have to seek ... for something like the beetle scuttling between grass'
Judith Harris's poetry has appeared in this column several times. She lives in Washington, DC. Here's a meditation from her most recent book of poems, Night Garden, from Tiger Bark Press.
HOW...
12th June 2017
'I will not speak ill of Jack Flick. I will rarely look at the scar he made on my cheek'
We're taught to never speak ill of the dead. Well, then, what do we do? Perhaps we forgive. Here's a lovely poem by Sarah White, who lives in New York. It's from her book from Deerbrook Editions, Wars...
5th June 2017
'She mortally threatened, wholly unaware that I do this daily'
The University of Minnesota Press has published a wonderful new collection of bee poems, If Bees Are Few, which may in some small way help the bees and will certainly offer some honey to poetry lovers...
29th May 2017
'How strange it seemed to look down on your life from somewhere else'
During the twelve years we've been doing this weekly column, today's poem will be the first time I've offered you a plane ride. It's just one of a number of fine poems from Patricia Hooper's book, Sep...
23rd May 2017
'My dishes in the sink, my brownie breakfast, my braless day'
Here's a celebration of one day in the week, the kids with the father, a brownie for breakfast, everything right with the world. January O'Neil lives in Massachusetts, and this poem first appeared in ...
15th May 2017
'You're what roof I have, frail thing, you're my argument against the whole sky'
I recently had the privilege of editing Connie Wanek's Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems,for the University of Nebraska Press. I had been in Duluth a number of years ago, and the following poem, n...
8th May 2017
'All the crazed emotions tangled up in the underbrush with us'
There are few writers who have done more to promote the work of other writers than Grace Cavalieri, who lives in the nation's capital. She has a radio show, The Poet and the Poem from the Library of C...
30th April 2017
'Whatever was in me in those days has mostly leaked away'
I'm celebrating my 78th birthday by publishing one of my own poems. When an old guy like me is still writing poetry, he tends to write a lot of old-guy poems.
LOOK FOR ME
by Ted Kooser
L...
24th April 2017
'It took him an hour for the half mile all the way up the hill'
Surely you've seen those Japanese scroll paintings in which tiny figures trail up the side of an enormous mountain? Here's a poem about one such life by Lucia Cherciu, who lives in Poughkeepsie, New Y...
16th April 2017
'This window, it's pane-less. It's only a frame of air'
Once the carpenter put the sash-weights into the wall next to the window, they were never seen again. Eventually they fell off the ropes and with just one loud outcry fell deeper into the dark. But we...
11th April 2017
'Speaking blurred names back into the world'
How many Oak Grove cemeteries can there be in America? There's one just a mile from my home. Here's another, with a poet, Don Thompson, to show us around. Poetry thrives on sounds as well as sense, an...
3rd April 2017
'Five daughters in the slant light on the porch'
A front porch is very much like a stage, and this poem by Marilyn Nelson is like watching a little play. The poet, who has published books of poetry and prose for young and old alike, lives in Connect...
27th March 2017
'He was a calm man, a useful attribute for sending young men to their deaths'
Nearly all of us have a story about once brushing up against somebody famous. On their honeymoon my father and mother went to New York City where they rode up in a hotel elevator with the famous strip...
21st March 2017
'The cranes, the grass, they tell us: this can go on for millions of years'
Charles Peek is a Nebraska poet who lives near that section of the Platte river where early each year hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes pause in their migration to nourish themselves for the lo...
13th March 2017
'Brenda wasn't listening to a word, wrapped up in lonely teardrops shed for Greg'
Here's a poem by John Stanizzi, who lives in Connecticut, in which we get a good look inside middle-school culture in the 'sixties. But is it really any different today? This poet's most recent book i...
7th March 2017
'The broken pieces, made whole again, merged into two reconstructed hearts'
There are those like me who can't even tell when an avocado is ripe, and those who know exactly how to perfectly prepare a ripe one. Here's a poem of avocado expertise by Diane Lockward from The Uneat...
27th February 2017
'How to be private and patient, how to be unbuttoned'
The next time you open your closet, this poem will give you reason to pay a little more attention to what's hanging inside. Gary Whited is from Massachusetts and his most recent book is Having Listene...
23rd February 2017
'With only a smear of water to keep them singing'
All too often poets shun simple, direct, and earthy words like "tea" in favor of others that sound more sophisticated, like Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong. But fancy words put experience at a greater d...
13th February 2017
'Only she can see where she goes and track where she's been'
Fog carries mystery within it, and here's a fine poem about a day in which a memory approaches through fog and makes itself real. Michael Lauchlan lives in Michigan and his most recent book is Trumbul...
6th February 2017
'You are now only a person I may hope to meet momentarily'
Seeing a stranger who reminds you of someone else, well, it happens to all of us. After my father died I saw dozens of little old men in hats like he wore, on their way here and there, not quite my da...
30th January 2017
'One by one all the questions you ever had become clear'
Those of you who've returned home to visit parents may recognise the way the familiar and the strange wash together in this wise and peaceful poem by Robert Tremmel. The poet is from Iowa and his most...
23rd January 2017
'Some trace that stays while the great body remains below out of sight'
Marge Saiser is a Nebraska poet about whose work I have said that no contemporary poet is better at writing about love. Here's a love poem from her new book, I Have Nothing to Say about Fire, from Bac...
22nd January 2017
'We pull an arm's length of the sail down over itself, then do this again'
I'm fond of poems in which we see people working together, helping one another. I've never folded a sail, nor seen anybody fold one, but here I get to watch it happen, and feel it happen, too. Alan Fe...
9th January 2017
'What I want tonight is lipstick. As pure a red as I can find'
There are times when a single word in a poem is so perfect a choice that it pops like a firecracker, and I'll let you guess which word did that for me. A hint: it's a modifier. The poem is by Anya Kru...
3rd January 2017
