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Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems
"Kooser . . . must be the most accessible and enjoyable major poet in America. His lines are so clear and simple." --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
"Nothing escapes him; everything is illuminated." --Library Journal
"Will one day rank alongside of Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams." --Minneapolis Tribune
"Kooser's ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift." --The Bloomsbury Review
Four decades of poetry--and a generous selection of new work--make up this extraordinary collection by Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser. Firmly rooted in the landscapes of the Midwest, Kooser's poetry succeeds in finding the emotional resonances within the ordinary. Kooser's language of quiet intensity trains itself on the intricacies of human relationships, as well as the animals and objects that make up our days. As Poetry magazine said of his work, "Kooser documents the dignities, habits, and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance."
From "March 2"
Patchy clouds and windy.
All morning
our house has been flashing in and out of shade
like a signal, and far across the waves of grass
a neighbor's house has answered,
offering help.
Ted Kooser is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Delights & Shadows, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and is a visiting professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
"Nothing escapes him; everything is illuminated." --Library Journal
"Will one day rank alongside of Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams." --Minneapolis Tribune
"Kooser's ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift." --The Bloomsbury Review
Four decades of poetry--and a generous selection of new work--make up this extraordinary collection by Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser. Firmly rooted in the landscapes of the Midwest, Kooser's poetry succeeds in finding the emotional resonances within the ordinary. Kooser's language of quiet intensity trains itself on the intricacies of human relationships, as well as the animals and objects that make up our days. As Poetry magazine said of his work, "Kooser documents the dignities, habits, and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance."
From "March 2"
Patchy clouds and windy.
All morning
our house has been flashing in and out of shade
like a signal, and far across the waves of grass
a neighbor's house has answered,
offering help.
Ted Kooser is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Delights & Shadows, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and is a visiting professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
- GenresPoetryAdultContemporary
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 24, 2018
37 people are currently reading
214 people want to read
About the author
Ted Kooser
101 books300 followersTed 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."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
December 30, 2018
Making no apologies to those who think a really good poem needs to leave the reader wondering what on earth it was all about, I’ll say right off the bat that one reason I have always loved Ted Kooser’s poetry is precisely because I don’t end up feeling completely bewildered when I’ve finished reading it.
In fact it’s just the opposite. It’s that sense of connection and Kooser’s lovely way of capturing what’s worth paying attention to about the ordinary business of living our lives surrounded by everyday things (like dishwashers, kitchen tables and the laundry.)
Because he is such a keen observer of the world around him, he writes about what it means to have people in our lives who are dear to us and why our memories of them matter. His poems are full of ordinary people doing ordinary things (like splitting an order in a restaurant or turning up the thermostat or shopping at a Goodwill Store.)
He is especially skilled at finding words for what the natural world has to offer those who stop and pay attention. Here’s an example from Winter Walks, a collection of poems published in 2000:
The sky hangs thin and wet on its clothesline.
A deer of gray vapor steps through the foreground
under the dripping, lichen-rusted trees.
Halfway across the next field,
the distance (or can that be the future?)
is sealed up in tin like an old barn.
Kindest Regards brings together poems from earlier works as well as those that have been written more recently. Not only is it a reminder of why we need poets to help us pay attention to our world, it’s also a tribute to one of them.
In fact it’s just the opposite. It’s that sense of connection and Kooser’s lovely way of capturing what’s worth paying attention to about the ordinary business of living our lives surrounded by everyday things (like dishwashers, kitchen tables and the laundry.)
Because he is such a keen observer of the world around him, he writes about what it means to have people in our lives who are dear to us and why our memories of them matter. His poems are full of ordinary people doing ordinary things (like splitting an order in a restaurant or turning up the thermostat or shopping at a Goodwill Store.)
He is especially skilled at finding words for what the natural world has to offer those who stop and pay attention. Here’s an example from Winter Walks, a collection of poems published in 2000:
The sky hangs thin and wet on its clothesline.
A deer of gray vapor steps through the foreground
under the dripping, lichen-rusted trees.
Halfway across the next field,
the distance (or can that be the future?)
is sealed up in tin like an old barn.
Kindest Regards brings together poems from earlier works as well as those that have been written more recently. Not only is it a reminder of why we need poets to help us pay attention to our world, it’s also a tribute to one of them.
May 15, 2018
I enjoyed reading the older poems Kooser collected together yet most cherished the new poems at the end of the book.
I smiled as I remembered the old poems. My Kooser books are dog-eared with dust-gilding now. I take them on trips and he works like a tour guide before I get to where I'm getting to. I read Kooser as we travel and then put the book down after a poem or two. It doesn't take much to get my eyes and spirit to dilate. All the noticings are enhanced. My guide got me to wake up a bit.
"Kindest Regards" has the best poems at the end. Maybe I like those best because I haven't yet read them twenty times. Or maybe it's the mystery of the last decades of life that Kooser captures well that has me mystified. That's what those poems felt like to me--like a man seeing things with a nod and stagger. He sees and walks slowly along his way. Maybe he'll see it again. He tells me what he saw as we walk. I don't know if we'll be back there together again.
I smiled as I remembered the old poems. My Kooser books are dog-eared with dust-gilding now. I take them on trips and he works like a tour guide before I get to where I'm getting to. I read Kooser as we travel and then put the book down after a poem or two. It doesn't take much to get my eyes and spirit to dilate. All the noticings are enhanced. My guide got me to wake up a bit.
"Kindest Regards" has the best poems at the end. Maybe I like those best because I haven't yet read them twenty times. Or maybe it's the mystery of the last decades of life that Kooser captures well that has me mystified. That's what those poems felt like to me--like a man seeing things with a nod and stagger. He sees and walks slowly along his way. Maybe he'll see it again. He tells me what he saw as we walk. I don't know if we'll be back there together again.
February 4, 2020
Too much like Robert Frost and Mary Oliver, but not as good as either, to be worth my gushing. Still, quite interesting and, yes, accessible, so def. rec. to ppl who only read poetry for Challenges.
From *Sparklers" "I scratched your name in longhand/ on the night, then you wrote mine."
*At Arby's, at Noon* is about a witnessed event that could inspire a whole novel, not just a poem. A pretty young woman, blind, gives a 'see you later' kiss to a man with a badly scarred, disfigured face.
From *By Flowing Water* "Just once, he said,/ he wanted his own bed under a window/ with begonias in blossom on the sill,/ and before nodding off to take a deep breath / of the river, bait buckets and fish scales/ sweeping along through the night,/ and to be able to hear the soft ripples/ from moonstruck eddies coming to shore...."
One of my favorite poems is one of the new ones, "A Summer Afternoon with Clouds" in which the wind is personified as "peevish."
From *Sparklers" "I scratched your name in longhand/ on the night, then you wrote mine."
*At Arby's, at Noon* is about a witnessed event that could inspire a whole novel, not just a poem. A pretty young woman, blind, gives a 'see you later' kiss to a man with a badly scarred, disfigured face.
From *By Flowing Water* "Just once, he said,/ he wanted his own bed under a window/ with begonias in blossom on the sill,/ and before nodding off to take a deep breath / of the river, bait buckets and fish scales/ sweeping along through the night,/ and to be able to hear the soft ripples/ from moonstruck eddies coming to shore...."
One of my favorite poems is one of the new ones, "A Summer Afternoon with Clouds" in which the wind is personified as "peevish."
December 22, 2018
In an interview with Kenyon Review editor David Baker, former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prizer winner Ted Kooser laudably commented: “I’d like to be on record as saying that anybody can write a poem that nobody can understand.” With that, Kooser more or less throws a finger to a certain segment, by no means small, of the past half century or so of American poetry.
Throughout Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems, Kooser shows not the slightest interest in creating puzzles or indulging in obscurantism. He seems utterly untouched by or at least unharmed by surrealism. He’s not at all uncomfortable about his sympathies and affections. Nor is he by any means disdainful of the mundane: a poem called “The Urine Specimen” is followed by another called “”Porch Swing in September.” While it’s true that some of his poems do seem too easy, flat or underworked, as is often the case with his equally anomalous and admirable kindred poet Mary Oliver, at his best Kooser like Oliver takes an unobtrusive place in the company of such enduring poets as Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams and A. R. Ammons.
When I was in my early 20s, it was the practice of the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house to select one poem from any new collection and print it on the back cover of the book’s dust jacket, in lieu of blurbs or puffy descriptive matter. I thought that was a fine idea, and I was pleased to see the same practice adopted by Copper Canyon Press on the back cover of Kooser’s book. Next to a photo of the poet we get this:
HOARFROST
Two days of an icy prairie fog
and every blade of grass, and twig,
and branch, and every stretch
of wire, barb, post and staple,
is a knot or a thread in a lace
of the purest white. To walk
is like finding your way
through a wedding dress, the sky
inside it cold and satiny;
no past, no future, just the now
all breathless. Then a red bird,
like a pinprick, changes everything.
After that entices you into the book, halfway through on page 111, you come to this:
MOTHER
Mid-April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
a against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass and the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, s tar-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.
You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat sun the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
\a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.
The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
looking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,
for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened
and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fits of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have had to be lonely forever.
Only Kooser could have given us this poem, with that raising-the-hairs-on-your arms last line, rescued from its otherwise devastating finality by the preceding lines. You end up grateful that Kooser wakes up each day and goes about his attentive, unassuming ways. (Having used the words “unobtrusive” and “unassuming,” I can’t resist noting that if you get a signed copy of a book by Kooser, his signature is as startlingly tiny as Annie Proulx’s.)
Here’s a deft stanza from “A Morning in Early Spring,” one of his longest and finest poems:
No other day like this one.
A crocus like a wooden match —
Ohio Blue Tip — flares in the shadows
that drip from the downspout.
I’m struck by the way the name of that common kitchen match suddenly sounds as if it could be the popular name for a plant, or even a bird.
One more, and then I’ll leave you to the book. This is the title poem from his chock-full-of-gems 2014 collection Splitting An Order:
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firmly on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife, and her fork in their proper places,
then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds both old hands out to him.
Semper Kooser!
Throughout Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems, Kooser shows not the slightest interest in creating puzzles or indulging in obscurantism. He seems utterly untouched by or at least unharmed by surrealism. He’s not at all uncomfortable about his sympathies and affections. Nor is he by any means disdainful of the mundane: a poem called “The Urine Specimen” is followed by another called “”Porch Swing in September.” While it’s true that some of his poems do seem too easy, flat or underworked, as is often the case with his equally anomalous and admirable kindred poet Mary Oliver, at his best Kooser like Oliver takes an unobtrusive place in the company of such enduring poets as Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams and A. R. Ammons.
When I was in my early 20s, it was the practice of the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house to select one poem from any new collection and print it on the back cover of the book’s dust jacket, in lieu of blurbs or puffy descriptive matter. I thought that was a fine idea, and I was pleased to see the same practice adopted by Copper Canyon Press on the back cover of Kooser’s book. Next to a photo of the poet we get this:
HOARFROST
Two days of an icy prairie fog
and every blade of grass, and twig,
and branch, and every stretch
of wire, barb, post and staple,
is a knot or a thread in a lace
of the purest white. To walk
is like finding your way
through a wedding dress, the sky
inside it cold and satiny;
no past, no future, just the now
all breathless. Then a red bird,
like a pinprick, changes everything.
After that entices you into the book, halfway through on page 111, you come to this:
MOTHER
Mid-April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
a against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass and the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, s tar-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.
You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat sun the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
\a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.
The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
looking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,
for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened
and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fits of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have had to be lonely forever.
Only Kooser could have given us this poem, with that raising-the-hairs-on-your arms last line, rescued from its otherwise devastating finality by the preceding lines. You end up grateful that Kooser wakes up each day and goes about his attentive, unassuming ways. (Having used the words “unobtrusive” and “unassuming,” I can’t resist noting that if you get a signed copy of a book by Kooser, his signature is as startlingly tiny as Annie Proulx’s.)
Here’s a deft stanza from “A Morning in Early Spring,” one of his longest and finest poems:
No other day like this one.
A crocus like a wooden match —
Ohio Blue Tip — flares in the shadows
that drip from the downspout.
I’m struck by the way the name of that common kitchen match suddenly sounds as if it could be the popular name for a plant, or even a bird.
One more, and then I’ll leave you to the book. This is the title poem from his chock-full-of-gems 2014 collection Splitting An Order:
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firmly on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife, and her fork in their proper places,
then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds both old hands out to him.
Semper Kooser!
March 7, 2021
Ted Kooser writes in a way that's so meditative, it makes you slow down, take it all in and look at life.
My favorites: "Hoarfrost", "a letter", "four secretaries", "At the cancer clinic", "mourners", "Fathers", "death of a dog"
My favorites: "Hoarfrost", "a letter", "four secretaries", "At the cancer clinic", "mourners", "Fathers", "death of a dog"
February 28, 2025
Has this ever happened to you? You see something so exquisite—a crabapple in full bloom against an ardently blue sky, say, or the precise curve of a horse's neck under a stiff brush of mane—that the beauty of the vision causes not just joy, but a kind of pain?
If you are familiar with this kind of pain, you will know what it feels like to read Ted Kooser's poems. This is a beautiful collection by one of the best poets writing today.
How can you not love a poet who opens his book like this:
Selecting a Reader
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore , she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
Ted Kooser is a man who keenly observes the world around him and who is able to describe things we've all seen many times in a way that makes us see it for the first time. Who, for example, has never looked into a medicine cabinet? But who has opened the door and seen "a dusty little chronicle/ of small complaints and private sorrows, / each cough caught dry and airless/ in amber, the sore feet powdered/ and cool in their yellow can"? (from "After the Funeral: Cleaning Out the Medicine Cabinet").
In his poem, "For a Friend," he writes:
You have been dead for six months;
though summer and fall
were lighter by one life,
they didn't seem to show it.
The seasons, those steady horses,
are used to the fickle weight
of our shifting load.
I'll end with my favorite poem in the collection, "A Color Slide," a poem that combines grief and loss and the passage of time which eventually erases all memory of our lives from the earth:
It's an Ektachrome slide of my grandfather
in his early nineties, hoeing his sweetcorn patch
on a hot summer day, the photograph bleached,
the plants like pale green fountains falling
back, a billed cap cooling the top of his face,
bib overalls and workshirt damp and salty
even at this distance, sixty years from then.
He didn't look up to see me there, taking
his picture. He was looking for weeds, not
immortality, but this stamp-sized piece
of color film and three grown grandchildren,
all in their seventies now, have given him
another fifty years to be remembered,
the blink of an eye. And here he is, bent
in his garden, chopping away at his weeds,
reaching out with his hoe and hooking it
into the earth and pulling himself forward,
like a man standing up in a rowboat, a few feet
from the future, tossing a rope to the shore.
If you are familiar with this kind of pain, you will know what it feels like to read Ted Kooser's poems. This is a beautiful collection by one of the best poets writing today.
How can you not love a poet who opens his book like this:
Selecting a Reader
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore , she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
Ted Kooser is a man who keenly observes the world around him and who is able to describe things we've all seen many times in a way that makes us see it for the first time. Who, for example, has never looked into a medicine cabinet? But who has opened the door and seen "a dusty little chronicle/ of small complaints and private sorrows, / each cough caught dry and airless/ in amber, the sore feet powdered/ and cool in their yellow can"? (from "After the Funeral: Cleaning Out the Medicine Cabinet").
In his poem, "For a Friend," he writes:
You have been dead for six months;
though summer and fall
were lighter by one life,
they didn't seem to show it.
The seasons, those steady horses,
are used to the fickle weight
of our shifting load.
I'll end with my favorite poem in the collection, "A Color Slide," a poem that combines grief and loss and the passage of time which eventually erases all memory of our lives from the earth:
It's an Ektachrome slide of my grandfather
in his early nineties, hoeing his sweetcorn patch
on a hot summer day, the photograph bleached,
the plants like pale green fountains falling
back, a billed cap cooling the top of his face,
bib overalls and workshirt damp and salty
even at this distance, sixty years from then.
He didn't look up to see me there, taking
his picture. He was looking for weeds, not
immortality, but this stamp-sized piece
of color film and three grown grandchildren,
all in their seventies now, have given him
another fifty years to be remembered,
the blink of an eye. And here he is, bent
in his garden, chopping away at his weeds,
reaching out with his hoe and hooking it
into the earth and pulling himself forward,
like a man standing up in a rowboat, a few feet
from the future, tossing a rope to the shore.
April 14, 2019
A wonderful collection of poems that showcases the career of a master poet.
Some standouts:
1. Five pm-- about a hook-up, rendezvous
2. Abandoned Farmhouse-- clues for the observant
3. Ladder-- anthropomorphism, where a ladder whistles
4. The Great Grandparents-- beautiful imagery of pulling back into the past and pulling forward into the future
5. The collection of Winter Morning Walks-- great concept
6. November 18-- "moon on a leash"
7. After the Funeral: Cleaning out the Medicine Cabinet--sad, powerful. "private sorrows" is a great phrase
8. February 16-- simply amazing
9. Mother-- incredible poem. Consider for eulogy. Last line =
"Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever."
10. Father-- love of lilacs. "Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you"
11. Pearl-- touching story
12. Telescope-- brilliant
13. A Walk with My Dog- describes walking with dog into a "hospice for trees". A powerful meditation on mortality.
14. A Color Slide-- "a few feet from the future"
15. Three Shadows-- a beautiful poem that remembers a dead poet (Nancy Willard)
16. A Long Midwinter Walk-- uses a wire fence as an analogy for musical notation "in that range,
of the scale between forward and back"
17. Waxer. Uses a floor waxer as an analogy for a dancer.
Some standouts:
1. Five pm-- about a hook-up, rendezvous
2. Abandoned Farmhouse-- clues for the observant
3. Ladder-- anthropomorphism, where a ladder whistles
4. The Great Grandparents-- beautiful imagery of pulling back into the past and pulling forward into the future
5. The collection of Winter Morning Walks-- great concept
6. November 18-- "moon on a leash"
7. After the Funeral: Cleaning out the Medicine Cabinet--sad, powerful. "private sorrows" is a great phrase
8. February 16-- simply amazing
9. Mother-- incredible poem. Consider for eulogy. Last line =
"Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever."
10. Father-- love of lilacs. "Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you"
11. Pearl-- touching story
12. Telescope-- brilliant
13. A Walk with My Dog- describes walking with dog into a "hospice for trees". A powerful meditation on mortality.
14. A Color Slide-- "a few feet from the future"
15. Three Shadows-- a beautiful poem that remembers a dead poet (Nancy Willard)
16. A Long Midwinter Walk-- uses a wire fence as an analogy for musical notation "in that range,
of the scale between forward and back"
17. Waxer. Uses a floor waxer as an analogy for a dancer.
July 7, 2022
Ted Kooser deserves all the stars in the sky. However, since I am limited on goodreads to giving just 5 stars…then 5 stars it is!
November 7, 2023
Kooser brings magic to everyday life. His poetry is direct and accessible, but he still finds a way to elevate the ordinary with clever insights and connections. I love his work.
May 30, 2018
Kindest Regards has many of my favorite Kooser poems: Selecting a Reader, Shoes, Barn Owl, and many more. It also contains poems from books I haven't been able to get my hands on yet (One World at a Time and At Home) and poems from excellent books my library doesn't own (Valentines and Sure Signs). The most exciting part of the book for me came at the end. New poems! And such beautiful, emotional, exquisite poems!
One of my favorite lines comes from the poem, A Summer Afternoon with Clouds: "But still there's the sorely overworked wind stuck at his station for the rest of the day. He dreams of having just one afternoon alone with not one cloud, with a few pleasant hours to enjoy his collection, his big stamp album spread open, showing the villages and fields."
One of my favorite lines comes from the poem, A Summer Afternoon with Clouds: "But still there's the sorely overworked wind stuck at his station for the rest of the day. He dreams of having just one afternoon alone with not one cloud, with a few pleasant hours to enjoy his collection, his big stamp album spread open, showing the villages and fields."
August 19, 2018
How can anything be as wonderful as a New and Selected by Uncle Ted?
I’m so pleased to own this. I’m hoping for a Complete Poems to appear from Kooser before he’s much older. But for now, this will have to do.
And that’s a good thing. The selected poems from Kooser’s previous works are some of his best and we’ll known. But there are some gems here that I hadn’t read before, and a generous selection of the postcard poems he exchanged with Jim Harrison.
The new poems are mostly very good. Not great. Some miss the mark in a way I find common amongst increasingly “mature” poets. But “The Clipper Ship” and “A February Walk,” for instance, are as wonderful as any of Kooser’s older poems.
I’m biased. I believe Kooser is a national treasure. I’m just happy to hold this book I my hands.
I’m so pleased to own this. I’m hoping for a Complete Poems to appear from Kooser before he’s much older. But for now, this will have to do.
And that’s a good thing. The selected poems from Kooser’s previous works are some of his best and we’ll known. But there are some gems here that I hadn’t read before, and a generous selection of the postcard poems he exchanged with Jim Harrison.
The new poems are mostly very good. Not great. Some miss the mark in a way I find common amongst increasingly “mature” poets. But “The Clipper Ship” and “A February Walk,” for instance, are as wonderful as any of Kooser’s older poems.
I’m biased. I believe Kooser is a national treasure. I’m just happy to hold this book I my hands.
March 6, 2019
Kooser's latest collection brings together some of his favorite works previously published with more of the same but new. His eye remains sharp and he alternates between the animate and the inanimate objects in our lives; perhaps not as nostalgic (and dusty?) as other collections. Kooser is to poetry what Woody Guthrie was to music and what James Agee was to photography - he uses simple constructions of still-lifes that he encounters along his day's route and shows us their meaning. The subjects are broad but his remarks concise. Kooser is clearly one of those gracious people who knows when to stop talking.
December 15, 2019
Let's say 4.5 stars. Kooser is one of my favorite poets, accessible, varied, with good metaphors and not too much hand-waving to distract from the fact that even the author doesn't really know what he or she means by the poem. He's like Billy Collins, Stephen Dobyns, Mark Doty, and a lot of deceased poets that I still enjoy in this regard. It was nice to revisit some old favorites and get a few new poems at the end. Kooser is a great suggestion for people who think they like poetry but don't like writing that is too vague.
April 6, 2024
I love poetry, and of all the different kinds of poetry I have read, haiku and free verse are my favorites. Kooser's poems often remind me of haiku, in that they are grounded in nature, have very little simile, paint a very vivid image, and are based in the moment. There is a lot in this book, and a turn of the page can take your breath away.
October 18, 2018
I love Kooser's ability to make the mundane seem beautiful.
January 1, 2019
One of my favourite poets. And this is a perfect selection of Ted Kooser's poems, all extraordinary interpretations of the ordinary.
June 16, 2018
The first 2/3 of the collection is phenomenal. The newer poems don't penetrate as deeply and their endings don't pack as deft a punch. Kooser is indeed a very accessible poet: he finds beauty in everyday life and writes in a conversational tone. He relies heavily on metaphors (or similes), and for good reason: they are some of the most brilliant I've ever come across. This book reveals the pathos of the physical world, which often hides in plain sight. The best poems start with a description and end with a moment of startling lucidity. You see yourself reflected in them, and so you say, "Ah, yes. I know exactly what he means."
My favorites:
Selecting a Reader
The Constellation Orion
Father
Ladder
Walking at Noon near the Burlington Depot in Lincoln, Nebraska
The Voyager 2 Satellite
City Limits
Surveyors
A Jar of Buttons
After Years
For You, Friend
Two
My favorites:
Selecting a Reader
The Constellation Orion
Father
Ladder
Walking at Noon near the Burlington Depot in Lincoln, Nebraska
The Voyager 2 Satellite
City Limits
Surveyors
A Jar of Buttons
After Years
For You, Friend
Two
August 23, 2018
Another wonderful book of poetry by the wonderful Ted Kooser.
I was not aware when I first saw this book that it was selected poems (I checked it out from my library online and it didn’t show the subtitle) and was very pleasantly surprised by that. I feel like it gave me a little taste of each of his prior publishings, and gave me an even deeper desire to read Winter Morning Walks. I loved every poem from that section. I also loved the selection from Delights and Shadows, which I’ve read previously. Some new favorites (for my own aid later) were A Summer Afternoon with Clouds, Locust Trees in Late May, Awakening, Sleep Apnea, Bad News, Swinging from Parents, And basically all the ones from Winter Morning Walks (my favorite might be January 19). Beautiful, imaginative, I enjoyed every minute!
I was not aware when I first saw this book that it was selected poems (I checked it out from my library online and it didn’t show the subtitle) and was very pleasantly surprised by that. I feel like it gave me a little taste of each of his prior publishings, and gave me an even deeper desire to read Winter Morning Walks. I loved every poem from that section. I also loved the selection from Delights and Shadows, which I’ve read previously. Some new favorites (for my own aid later) were A Summer Afternoon with Clouds, Locust Trees in Late May, Awakening, Sleep Apnea, Bad News, Swinging from Parents, And basically all the ones from Winter Morning Walks (my favorite might be January 19). Beautiful, imaginative, I enjoyed every minute!
January 26, 2023
Ted Kooser has that trickster brilliance that leads an inexperienced writer/ reader to the complete bull$#@! conclusion that writing is simple and we can all do it.
Give the humble man his due: he finds the words that make us think we thought it first. He puts them together in a way we think we could put them, and then he wraps them in pain brown paper with simple twine and hands it to us with a smile and a quiet, "This one's on the house."
Nothing he does is simple or easy to do. He truly is better than the rest of us, and his unwillingness to say that proves it true. This collection is simply beautiful, illuminating, and awe-worthy. But don't be fooled, it isn't simple.
I keep trying to convince my parents to put this one book on the nightstand and take a hit every night. It's calming and its siren song will cure what ails ya'. But never believe it's easy.
Give the humble man his due: he finds the words that make us think we thought it first. He puts them together in a way we think we could put them, and then he wraps them in pain brown paper with simple twine and hands it to us with a smile and a quiet, "This one's on the house."
Nothing he does is simple or easy to do. He truly is better than the rest of us, and his unwillingness to say that proves it true. This collection is simply beautiful, illuminating, and awe-worthy. But don't be fooled, it isn't simple.
I keep trying to convince my parents to put this one book on the nightstand and take a hit every night. It's calming and its siren song will cure what ails ya'. But never believe it's easy.
October 13, 2023
This book is a collection of poems from previous books as well as new poems.
The previous books it pulls from are...
Sure Signs
One World at a Time (this is a difficult book to find)
The Blizzard Voices (I recommend reading this book in its entirety)
Weather Central
Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison
Delights & Shadows
Valentines
Splitting an Order
At Home
There are approximately 45 new poems in this book.
A great collection for people new to Ted Kooser's poetry and a worthwhile addition to your collection if you are already a fan.
The previous books it pulls from are...
Sure Signs
One World at a Time (this is a difficult book to find)
The Blizzard Voices (I recommend reading this book in its entirety)
Weather Central
Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison
Delights & Shadows
Valentines
Splitting an Order
At Home
There are approximately 45 new poems in this book.
A great collection for people new to Ted Kooser's poetry and a worthwhile addition to your collection if you are already a fan.
February 16, 2024
Daddy Longlegs
Here, on fine long legs springy as steel,
a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill
that skims along over the basement floor
wrapped up in a simple obsession.
Eight legs reach out like the master ribs
of a web in which some thought is caught
dead center in its own small world,
a thought so far from the touch of things
that we can only guess at it. If mine,
it would be the secret dream
of walking alone across the floor of my life
with an easy grace, and with love enough
to live on at the center of myself.
Here, on fine long legs springy as steel,
a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill
that skims along over the basement floor
wrapped up in a simple obsession.
Eight legs reach out like the master ribs
of a web in which some thought is caught
dead center in its own small world,
a thought so far from the touch of things
that we can only guess at it. If mine,
it would be the secret dream
of walking alone across the floor of my life
with an easy grace, and with love enough
to live on at the center of myself.
September 30, 2019
This is an amazing collection of poetry by my favorite poet of all time, Ted Kooser. How he can write about just ANYTHING, but in a lyrical/poetic way, it's fabulous. And I even read a couple to my husband who is not a fan of poetry, and he took a picture of one with his phone b/c he wants to re-read it again and again. Love Mr. Kooser's vision of the world, he sees things that connect where most people don't. I really enjoyed it.
October 30, 2025
Kooser knows how to take ordinary life and illustrate it with his words so beautifully that you find the extraordinary in otherwise mundane things. His poetry aches for a simpler and quieter life and speaks on relationships and of nature. His observations are poignant, often tender, and show a love and appreciation for the world around us. His work is also very accessible, but this does not diminish the art crafted from his words. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of his works.
May 31, 2018
I wrongly assumed that this book would have many more new poems... The New poems lack Kooser craft, "the short metaphor poem" they are description poems, that are very frank and lack the fantasy of poems such as in Flying at Night. If you truly want to see what Kooser is capable of I suggest checking out Flying at Night, Valentines, Winter Morning Walks and even Delights and Shadows.
July 5, 2018
This book includes selected poems published over 4 decades and new poetry from a major Pulitzer Prize winning poet in America. Kooser was also the 2004-2006 US Poet Laureate. The poems are primarily focused on our daily life and the impact of actions, animals, landscapes, etc. It was a pleasure to reread poems from decades ago and read his current creations as he nears his eighties.
July 19, 2018
Ted Kooser's poetry often focuses on small details that capture the eye and become bigger, more important things in this amazing poet's hands. This collection includes many new poems as well as the best work from his most recent collections. An excellent introduction to one of our greatest living poets.
March 23, 2019
Ted Kooser is a poet whose profound musings on everyday life can powerfully change the way you view the world. For a great introduction to his work, listen to his recitation of "Pearl," one of the most moving poems I've encountered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPOYk...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPOYk...
January 18, 2020
Ted Kooser writes some of the most accessible poetry I've ever read. Also some of the most beautiful. And some I don't care for. Still, he's one of the poets who resonated with me when I first got serious about writing poetry. Highly recommended.
October 17, 2021
If you enjoy poems that take the ordinary bits and bring a new perspective to them, then this volume is for you. Ted Kooser, a master of the metaphor and specifics, offers a great collection of his work from the past and present. This book will be pulled off the shelf often.
December 31, 2021
I love Ted Kooser. The Midwest's poetic grandfather. Written with a calm, assured grace. Ted Kooser is probably my most reliable poet: consistent quality - a ceaseless dancing with beauty, with life.
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