"Kooser’s picturesque poetry vividly shapes his living sky metaphors. . . A lofty concept and radiant illustrations will leave readers on cloud nine." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)The skies are hanging their freshly washed—and sweepingly illustrated—clouds out to dry in Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Ted Kooser’s celestial ode to an approaching rainstorm.One sky unpins damp sheets of cirrus. Another wads cirrocumulus into a basket ...

Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska, an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention, including memories of his grandmother’s cooking. Kooser also reminds us that the closing of local schools, thoughtless county weed control, and irresponsible housing development destroy more than just the view.What makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his n...

For Valentine’s Day 1986, Ted Kooser wrote “Pocket Poem” and sent the tender, thoughtful composition to fifty women friends, starting an annual tradition that would persist for the next twenty-one years. Printed on postcards, the poems were mailed to a list of recipients that eventually grew to more than 2,500 women all over the United States. Valentines collects Kooser’s twenty-two years of Valentine’s Day poems, complemented with illustrations by Robert Hanna and a new poem appe...

“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 ...

For nearly half a century Jared Carter has been quietly mapping the American heartland. Line by line, his poetry has shown us the landscape, sounded the voices, conjured the music, and tested the silence of the ever-changing and yet ever-constant Midwest that figures so prominently in the American story. And yet what we find in Carter’s poetry is endlessly new. Here, in poems selected from his first five books, is the summer-long buzz of the cicada and the crack of the cue ball, the young ...

Focusing on popular verse from the nineteenth century through today, this anthology invites young readers to sample a taste of irresistible poems that will nourish their minds and spirits. Selected for both popularity and literary quality, seventy charming poems cover a wide range of subjects: poetry, books, words, and imagination; the beauty of the natural world; travel, adventure, sports, and play; love, friendship, sadness, hope, and other emotions. Included are:"Prickled Pickles...

Finalist for the 2023 Midwest Book AwardFinalist for the 2023 Heartland Booksellers Award“Poems dipped out of the air” describes the manner in which Ted Kooser composed the poems in Cotton Candy, the result of his daily routine of getting up long before dawn, sitting with coffee, pen, and notebook, and writing whatever drifts into his mind. Whether those words and images are serious or just plain silly, Kooser tries not to censor himself. His object...

Ted Kooser lives and writes on 62 acres of wooded hills and pasture in rural Nebraska with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, a retired editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. None of their property is farmed and is instead left to an abundance of wildlife. For many years Kooser worked at a desk in the life insurance business, retired at 60, and for fifteen years taught poetry writing in the graduate program of the University of Nebraska.He is the author of fifteen books of poetry, five volu...

Delightfully universal, Raft by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ted Kooser travels the Midwest landscape, attuned to life’s shared experiences and emotions**—**illness, aging, beauty, and love.Raftis our fourth collection of poetry from Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser. Open in his desire to write for the everyday reader, these poems maintain the open-handed and accessible style that thousands have come to lov...

Named U.S. Poet Laureate for 2004-2006, Ted Kooser is one of America's masters of the short metaphorical poem. Dana Gioia has remarked that Kooser has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation.In Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, Kooser has selected poems from two of his earlier works, Sure Signs (1980) and One World at a Time (1985). Taken together or read one at a time, these poems clearly show why William Cole, writing in the Saturday Revi...

2022 High Plains Book Award Winner in PoetryMarjorie Saiser’s strong, clear language makes the reader feel at home in her poems. Dealing with all the ways love goes right and wrong, this collection honors the challenges of holding firm to who we really are, as well as our connections to the natural world.The Track the Whales Make includes poems from Saiser’s seven previous books, along with new ones. Her poetry originates from the everyday things we might overlook ...

Gerald Costanzo, long known as one of the best contemporary poets of satire, focuses specifically on American themes that, though presented as parables, fables, jokes, and put-ons, remain darkly serious in tone. His subject is the mythic landscape of America itself: the transitory, popular, consumer culture of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century life.Costanzo evokes a sense of having arrived on the scene too late, of having missed the heyday of American innocence and pos...