Delights & Shadows

Delights and Shadows is Ted Kooser’s Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poetry published in 2004. It is an outstanding work of poetry in its immediate accessibility, and the beckoning for a return created by the poems. Kooser trusts the power of language, and his writing does not call attention to himself as much as the subject. Yet you leave the book feeling like you’ve met a friend who just shared some great stories with you.The book is broken into four sections, but I did not find them highlighting a change in continuity or subject. Like many great poets, Kooser looks at the everyday items around us and finds a new way of seeing them. Sometimes this backfires for poets as it can sound like a Seinfeld comedy routine, but Kooser looks more amazed at seeing something familiar for the first time. Whether is a blue, spiral notebook or a necktie, you can hear his surprise.The NecktieHis hands fluttered like birds,each with a fancy silk ribbonto weave into their nest,as he stood at the mirrordressing for work, waving helloto himself with both hands.Not only do you see Kooser’s new look at an old item here, but you get a glimpse of his sense of humor. In many of the poems you hear the poet chuckling as he tells the story, but he never laughs at people. This is a rare trait in humanity, and it shows us a man who is both wise and humble (an even rarer trait).StudentThe green shell of his backpack makes him leaninto wave after wave of responsibility,and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,paddling ahead. He has extended his neckto its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak,breaks the cold surf. He’s got his baseball cap onbackward as up he crawls, out of the frothof a hangover and onto the sand of the future,and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.The balance comes in poems addressing “heavy” topics with a light touch. Not humorous, but not needed to make more dramatic what is already dramatic. Kooser clearly deals with old age in a number of poems, and death is not too far from much of what he writes (although death, alas, does not belong solely to the aged). Having spent time watching my youngest son unsuccessfully battle cancer, I appreciated the “grace” Kooser sees in this poem.At the Cancer ClinicShe is being helped toward the open doorthat leads to the examining roomsby two young women I take to be her sisters.Each bends to the weight of an armand steps with the straight, tough bearingof courage. At what must seem to bea great distance, a nurse holds the door,smiling and calling encouragement.How patient she is in the crisp white sailsof her clothes. The sick womanpeers from under her funny knit capto watch each foot swing scuffing forwardand take its turn under her weight.There is no restlessness or impatienceor anger anywhere in sight. Gracefills the clean mold of this momentand all the shuffling magazines grow still.Another interesting set of poems revolves around four Civil War paintings by Winslow Homer. The paintings are not in the book, but Kooser paints them so well you can imagine them. The poems are numbered, but fall under a single title of “Four Civil War Paintings by Winslow Homer.” I find it interesting when art comments on art, and Kooser uses poetry to respond to the paintings. It is not an art critique, but a response to art. He does not examine the brushstrokes as much as the mind behind the paintings. A series of paintings you may walk too quickly by in a museum show their depth when given consideration.1. SharpshooterA Union sniper in a treeSome part of art is the artof waiting – the chordbehind the tight fenceof a musical staff,the sonnet shut in a book.This is a painting ofwaiting: the sharp crackof the rifle still coiledunder the tinypercussion cap, the cappoised under the cockedcurl of the hammer,and this young man amongthe pine needles,his finger as light as a breathon the trigger,just a pinpoint of lightin his one open eye,like a star you might seein broad daylightif you thought to look up.There is rarely a place to go wrong in opening this book, and it is one worth returning to again and again. For those hoping to attract people into the world of poetry, Kooser is one of those poets that non-poets will “get.”Kooser also has a wonderful website with some of the poems, media (including nearly an hour of a poetry reading), and some great information. He is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and lives in Nebraska. He also edits the weekly newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry.”

Ted Kooser’s Delights and Shadows won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. This volume of poetry also helped Kooser become a two year Poet Laureate of the United States. Kooser’s poems are easily understandable for all readers. He writes of the ordinary everyday things that we all see and do, but his writing gives these things a little bit of something more. His poems include scenes from nature, garage sales, houses, hospital waiting rooms, and even stores. There is a little something for everyone in this book of poetry. The simplicity of Kooser’s poetry is perhaps the greatest strength of his book. In the poem “A Spiral Notebook,” he is describing the everyday spiral notebook that anyone at any store would find and buy. However, he then compares the notebook to getting older by saying, “It seems / a part of growing old is no longer / to have five subjects.” He says the elderly are set “instead to stand in a drugstore / and hang on to one subject / a little too long.” He is using the notebook to say that when one is young they have plenty to talk about and do which would fill the five subjects, but as one gets old they lose that ability. Some of the comparisons Kooser makes are just simply beautiful. In his poem “Rainy Day,” he makes the comparison of a woman pushing her wheelchair in the rain to a pianist playing the piano. His words compare the two and he ends with the woman in the wheelchair, “So expertly she plays the chords / of this difficult music she has mastered, / her wet face beautiful in its concentration, / while the wind turns the pages of rain.” The beautiful, simple and easily understandable poetry of Kooser’s book makes reading it a pleasure. Anyone who enjoys poetry would enjoy this volume of meaningful everyday poetry. Even people that do not routinely read poetry would find enjoyment in this book from Ted Kooser.

Ted Kooser writes beautiful poetry. I tend not to like modern poetry, with its cheap constructions and ignorance of punctuation. Kooser does make both these transgressions. His poems are mostly one long sentence, loosely tied together. But I cannot help but like his poetry.He is a true Romantic, reaching through the ordinary experiences and finding the extraordinary about them. His focus is on the commonplace, the world that surrounds modern man--the same world that modern man makes every effort to escape. But Kooser sees no need to escape, for wonder and awe fill him as he looks at his surroundings almost in a state of ecstasy.If you are afraid of poetry, this is not intimidating stuff. He makes poetry as accessible as Robert Frost. And his poetry is equally as deep for those who like poetry and are more seasoned readers of it. Give it a chance, and you might be pleasantly surprised. Not all modern poets are bad poets.

One of my book clubs read this as a monthly selection. I found Kooser’s work evocative as I am a child of the Great Plains. While there is depth in his work, a casual reader will not be lost and should find the work worth the effort.

Ted Kooser has the ability to capture everyday life in lyrical beauty. His poems are accessible and sensitive with the warmth of his dry humor evident throughout. There is not a poem that disappoints and all invite several rereadings. His newest book, Red Stilts is remarkable as well.

I came across Ted Kooser's Delights & Shadows by chance and was hooked from the very first poem. I could not stop reading until I finished the entire collection. Wonderfully accessible, the poems, through simple imagery and captured moments, seem to touch and bring back to light that which is most fundamental and often the most forgotten in human existence. Stunningly visual, the poems magically draw the reader into the story - the cold, the colors, the sounds are all so palpable. I frequently pick up the book and read a poem or two as a treat.

I like his work very much.

Beautiful poems, simple expression of complex emotions

Ted Kooser writes terrific verse and this book contains some of my favourite poems.He makes the ordinary extraordinary

Poeta cuidadoso, rural, iluminado.