Local Habitation and a Name

by Ted Kooser

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published June 1, 1974

About the author

Ted Kooser lives in rural Nebraska with his wife, Kathleen, and three dogs. He is one of America's most noted poets, having served two terms as U. S. Poet Laureate and, during the second term, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection, Delights & Shadows. He is a retired life insurance executive who now teaches part-time at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. The school board in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently opened Ted Kooser Elementary School, which Ted says is his greatest honor, among many awards and distinctions. He has published twelve collections of poetry and three nonfiction books. Two of the latter are books on writing, The Poetry Home Repair Manual and Writing Brave and Free, and a memoir, Lights on a Ground of Darkness (all from University of Nebraska Press. Bag in the Wind from Candlewick is his first children's book, with which he is delighted. "It's wonderful," Ted said, "to be writing for young people. I am reinventing myself at age 70."

Reviews

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Midwestern as it gets. A bit before my time. What did land, and while I'll continue reading Kooser, is a profound mutual understanding, an agreement of this habitation.

DRIVING HOME

Riding a winter sunset through the fields,
the wingvents whistling tumbleweeds of cold
across my face, Nebraska settles down
between my overshoes in drifts of snow.
I want to put my arms around the hills
and go to sleep. Somehow a day draws back
its colors when the sun sets, just as if
it were a man who pulls the bedding up
around his days to keep them in his heart.
I feel the sunset pulling up a quilt
out of the east, its pattern like the fields,
and tucking it around the car and me.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

(See handwritten journal)