Ted Kooser's advice on writing poetry

[milo]

Poems By Ted Kooser

Scroll down past the first poem and there are about 14 more poems...if you like that sort of thing. He is characterized as an elegiacal, or pastoral  quotidian. Personally I don't care for his poems as they seem to lack much rhythmic quality and appear to read as run-on sentences, such as "A Blind Woman."

"A Blind Woman" by Ted Kooser

She had turned her face up into
a rain of light, and came on smiling.

The light trickled down her forehead   
and into her eyes. It ran down

into the neck of her sweatshirt
and wet the white tops of her breasts.

Her brown shoes splashed on
into the light. The moment was like

a circus wagon rolling before her
through puddles of light, a cage on wheels,

and she walked fast behind it,   
exuberant, curious, pushing her cane

through the bars, poking and prodding,   
while the world cowered back in a corner.


I would like to see what he has to say in terms of advice, but I am not dropping 9 bucks for it. Why not just throw use some of the more salient ones Ray. Do a book review.

dale

Out of the 14 listed there, this is the worst one.  He committed to the 2 line stanzas and poor line breaks early and was forced to caryy it throughout the whole poem.  If he had posted it here, we could have talked him into a better choice - perhaps 2 stanzas of a block format or something and he could have revised it.  Unfortunate that he does not subscribe to the pigpen.

The others were mostly pretty good.

Try this one:

A Room in the Past by Ted Kooser

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill
with a morning light so bright   
you can’t see beyond its windows   
into the afternoon. A kitchen   
falling through time with its things   
in their places, the dishes jingling   
up in the cupboard, the bucket   
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck   
was thirty years. No one’s at home   
in this room. Its counter is wiped,   
and the dishrag hangs from its nail,   
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,   
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother   
moved through this life like a ghost,   
and when she had finished her years,   
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back   
on the rest of us, forever.

Edit:

ugh - just noticed his tense confusion in this one. Jesus Ted, why do you not participate at the Pigpen so we can help you correct these minor errors before you publish?