Find solace and connection in a world that feels increasingly divided with this collection of poems celebrating kindness, compassion, and shared humanity.Healing the Divide offers a powerful antidote to the negativity of modern life, inviting readers to embrace ordinary moments of grace and connection. Through the intimate focus of poetry, this anthology uncovers the beauty and vulnerability in everyday interactions, reminding us of our shared humanity. Ex...

Celebrated poets Ted Kooser along with Connie Wanek, and illustrator Richard Jones, explore figures of speech in a spirited and magical way—and invite our imaginations out to play.A freewheeling romp through the world of imagery and metaphor, this quietly startling collection of thirty poems, framed by the four elements, is about art and reality, fact and fancy. Look around: what do you see? A clown balancing a pie in a tree, or an empty nest perched on a leafless ...

"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 ...

Old Rags and Iron is a collection of narrative poems about the life experiences of working-class people with whom the author, R. F. McEwen, is not only acquainted but whose lives he has shared. McEwen supplemented his income as a teacher while working as a professional logger and tree trimmer, and he writes with great love and respect for blue-collar families.Set primarily in the back-of-the-yard neighborhood of South Side Chicago, where McEwen grew up, as well as Pine Rid...

From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Ted Kooser and award-winning illustrator, Jon Klassen, comes a poignant tale of loss, change, and nature's quiet triumph.When the house was new, not a single tree remained on its perfect lawn to give shade from the sun. The children in the house trailed the scent of wild trees to neighboring lots, where thick bushes offered up secret places to play. When the children grew up and moved away, their father, alone in the house, continued his battle agai...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

The poems in Produce Wagon explore the vast and varied circumstances of the human experience. Roy Scheele delves into his love for his wife in “Remembrances,” the opening poem from his first chapbook, and “Driving after Dark”; his fascination with the natural world in poems such as “How the Fox Got Away” and “Late Autumn Woods”; his appreciation of his family in “A Kitchen Memory” and “The Long Rise”; and his fondness for stories in “The Carny Circuit” and “In the Clear.” In these...

The Winter 2020-21 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”The Winter 2020-21 Issue, edited by Editor-in-chief Ladette Randolph and Poetry Editor John Skoyles, features poetry an...

Red Stilts finds Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser at the top of his imaginative and storytelling powers. Here are the richly metaphorical, imagistically masterful, clear and accessible poems for which he has become widely known. Kooser writes for an audience of everyday readers and believes poets “need to write poetry that doesn’t make people feel stupid.” Each poem in Red Stilts strives to reveal the complex beauties of the ordinary, of the world that’s righ...