50 Poetry for Students
indeed, a complete surprise. I am still a little sur-
prised, two months later.
What do you see as the role of the poet laure-
ate?To try to expand the audience for poetry. I in-
tend to do that largely by showing people that there
are poems that don’t turn readers away by their ob-
scurity and difficulty.
What will you be doing for LC in the next year?
Do you have a specific project planned, such as
Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project? It’s still
too early to go on record with my ideas, but I do
plan to undertake a project or two.
What is the value of libraries in your work?
My first job, as a boy of 12 or so, was making the
posters for the glass cases in front of our Carnegie
Library in my hometown of Ames, Iowa, and I have
been devoted to public libraries ever since. I once
wrote a novel, not a very good one and unpub-
lished, set in a library in a small town. I have served
on the board of the Lincoln, Nebraska, library sys-
tem and raised money for a special collection there.
I recently read my poems at the dedication of a
Carnegie Library Museum in Perry, Iowa, a stop I
would recommend to anyone crossing the country.
In short, libraries are a big part of my life, and a
big part, I’d guess, in every writer’s life.
Why is poetry important, and what can li-
brarians do to help people see its value?Poetry
can make our lives brighter and more interesting.
The challenge is in overcoming people’s fear of po-
etry, learned in public schools where poems were
taught as if they were algebra problems with one
right answer. We need to show readers that there
is a wealth of poetry that is not intimidating and
formidable.
You’re the first poet laureate from the Great
Plains. How will that affect the way you approach
your duties?I intend to bring some poets from out
here in the great middle of things to the library to
read their work, and I will be traveling and speak-
ing in the general area.
Will you participate in the National Book
Festival if there is one in 2005?I greatly enjoyed
the 2004 celebration and would certainly attend
again if it worked out. It would be fun to go at a
time when I could just listen to the authors and
look at the books and was not so caught up in in-
terviews, etc.
How has your new schedule affected your own
work? Are you able to devote much time to writ-
ing?I have done very little writing thus far, and
very little reading, which is just as important.There’s been lots of correspondence to answer and
places to be. Perhaps as the year goes on I can find
some quiet time to read and write, but I can afford
to do this work and let the other rest for a while.
It’s not like there are people holding their breath
till I write the next poem.
Source:$@American Libraries$$, “Straight Answers from
Ted Kooser,” in American Libraries, Vol. 35, No. 11,
December 2004, p. 31.Sources
Anderson, Sherwood, “An Apology for Crudity,” as quoted
in Heartland: Poets of the Midwest, edited by Lucien Stryk,
Northern Illinois University Press, 1967, p. viii.
De Grave, Kathleen, Review of Delights & Shadows, in Mid-
west Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4, Summer 2005, pp. 439–40.
Olson, Ray, Review of Delights & Shadows, in Booklist,
Vol. 100, No. 15, April 1, 2004, p. 1342.
Phillips, Brian, Review of Delights & Shadows, in Poetry,
Vol. 185, No. 5, February 2005, p. 396.Further Reading
Kelvin, Joanne Frankel, and Leslie B. Tyson, 100 Questions
and Answers about Cancer Symptoms and Cancer Treat-
ment Side Effects, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2005.
This book is not meant for medical professionals
but is easy for a person researching the topic to
understand.
Kooser, Ted, “Lying for the Sake of Making Poems,” in
After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography, edited by
Kate Sontag and David Graham, Graywolf Press, 2001,
pp. 158–61.
Kooser rejects the idea of making up events from
one’s life, finding life itself rich enough to sustain
poetry—a position that is clearly evident in “At the
Cancer Clinic.”
Solomon, Deborah, “The Way We Live Now: 9-12-04:
Questions for Ted Kooser; Plains Verse,” in the New York
Times Magazine, September 12, 2004, p. 21.
This interview was conducted soon after Kooser be-
came poet laureate. He gives his views on such di-
verse subjects as the value to writers of unhappy
childhoods and his own unfamiliarity with European
poetry.
Woessner, Warren, “Let Us Now Praise Rusty Tractors—
Ted Kooser and the Midwest Poetry Renaissance,” in Mid-
west Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4, Summer 2005, pp. 434–38.
The author describes a resurgence of quality litera-
ture coming out of the Midwest since the 1960s and
details Kooser’s place in the center of this literary
growth.At the Cancer Clinic