"Visiting Mountains" by Ted Kooser

The Tetons and the Snake River, Ansel Adams, 1942

The plains ignore us,

but these mountains listen,

an audience of thousands

holding its breath

in each rock. Climbing,

we pick our way

over the skulls of small talk.

On the prairies below us,

the grass leans this way and that

in discussion;

words fly away like corn shucks

over the fields.

Here, lost in a mountain’s

attention, there’s nothing to say.

"Visiting Mountains" by Ted Kooser from Flying at Night. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

Ted Kooser Interview

Jim Harrison has been a popular poet on this blog. His recent death prompted a spike in blog hits as people sought out his poetry.

One of Harrison's poems I had posted just days before his death is "Kooser called from Nebraska to say he'd found..." Maybe some wondered who the "Kooser" is immortalized in Harrison's poem.

Well, here he is, fellow-poet and friend Ted Kooser. The Writer's Almanac recently posted this interview. You'll find Kooser to be another voice speaking from the calm quiet heart of the chaos around us.

Ted Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939. Like Wallace Stevens before him, he took a job in the insurance business, where he worked for many years. He would get up early and write poems for an hour and a half before he went to work. By the time he retired in 1999, Kooser had published seven books of poetry, including Not Coming to Be Barked At (1976), One World at a Time (1985), and Weather Central (1994). He resigned himself to being a relatively unknown poet, but he continued to write every morning. Then, in 2004, he got a phone call informing him that he had been chosen as poet laureate of the United States. He said: “I was so staggered I could barely respond. The next day, I backed the car out of the garage and tore the rearview mirror off the driver’s side.”

Kooser served as U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006, one of the first poet laureates to be selected from the Great Plains, and during that time, his book Delights & Shadows (2005) won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He also began a weekly newspaper column called “American Life in Poetry.” His goal was to introduce simple poems about ordinary subjects to people who might not otherwise read poetry. He lives on a 62-acre spread near Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge. His latest collection, Splitting an Order, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2014.

Read the interview.

Earth Day: Two From Ted Kooser

Grant Wood "Spring Plowing"

Spring Plowing

West of Omaha the freshly plowed fields

steam in the night like lakes.

The smell of the earth floods over the roads.

The field mice are moving their nests

to the higher ground of fence rows,

the old among them crying out to the owls

to take them all. The paths in the grass

are loud with the squeak of their carts.

They keep their lanterns covered.

"Spring Plowing" by Ted Kooser, from Flying at Night.

 © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

Mary Denning "Spring Rain"

How to Foretell a Change in the Weather

Rain always follows the cattle

sniffing the air and huddling

in fields with their heads to the lee.

You will know that the weather is changing

when your sheep leave the pasture

too slowly, and your dogs lie about

and look tired; when the cat

turns her back to the fire,

washing her face, and the pigs

wallow in litter; cocks will be crowing

at unusual hours, flapping their wings;

hens will chant; when your ducks

and your geese are too noisy,

and the pigeons are washing themselves;

when the peacocks squall loudly

from the tops of the trees,

when the guinea fowl grates;

when sparrows chip loudly

and fuss in the roadway, and when swallows

fly low, skimming the earth;

when the carrion crow

croaks to himself, and wild fowl

dip and wash, and when moles

throw up hills with great fervor;

when toads creep out in numbers;

when frogs croak; when bats

enter the houses; when birds

begin to seek shelter,

and the robin approaches your house;

when the swan flies at the wind,

and your bees leave the hive;

when ants carry their eggs to and fro,

and flies bite, and the earthworm

is seen on the surface of things.

"How to Foretell a Change in the Weather" by Ted Kooser, from Flying at Night.

 © Universtity of Pittsburg Press, 1985.