#kooser

My dead parents try to keep out of my way. When I enter a room they have already left it, gone off to find something that ought to be done elsewhere in the house, my dad rolling the Hoover, my mother with dust rag and Pledge. At times I’ve heard their old slippers, pattering away down the hall, or seen for only an instant what might be the hem of her skirt as it swept through a door. I leave all the cleaning supplies where they’re easy to find, and they seem to last forever. “You don’t need to go!” I call out through the echoing rooms, but they’ve never turned back. They leave the floors shining behind them, and remember to turn off the lights.

jaybatzner · Selecting A Reader/A Widow Download the score – Selecting a Reader/A Widow Range: D4-F-sharp 5 Program NoteI have this collection of poetry from Pitt Press that I’ve been reading and reading since about 1992. A few poems by Ted Kooser caught my mind and I filed them away for a future text setting. When Katherine Crawford asked me to write a piece for her and electronics, I decided…

National Poetry Month Number 16 - Ted Kooser - In the Basement of the Goodwill Store

You can listen to the podcast version of today’s article on Spotify, ITunes, Anchor, Breaker, or Google Podcasts. Click Here to access links. (https://anchor.fm/steve-spanoudis) Look for the podcast titled National Poetry Month at the Other Pages.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades.

It’s hard, in the course of one month, for us to give you, the listener, or the reader, a full spectrum overview of all that is poetry. As the curator of the series, all I can say is that I try my best to look for shortcomings, and fill them. One is that we have probably not featured enough poems by poet laureates. Today we’ll chip away at that deficit with a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. (https://www.tedkooser.net/)

Today’s poem is titled In the Basement of the Goodwill Store, and the full text is online at the Poetry Foundation website (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42631/in-the-basement-of-the-goodwill-store).

I’m going to try and squeeze in two concepts and an anecdote. First is the idea, the conceit in this case, that things can take on a life of their own without us. A second life perhaps. For those elsewhere, or from the more monied side of the spectrum, let me explain that the Goodwill is a store that makes its money by selling people’s discards to other people for a (small) profit. Yes, they are making a profit off the poor, but things can be cheaply had by those who need them, in places where more affluent stores would never consider going.

Kooser, as poets commonly do, gets across this idea, and its atmospherics, by talking through the small details:

In musty light, in the thin brown air

of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,

beneath long rows of sharp footfalls

like nails in a lid, an old man stands

trying on glasses, lifting each pair

from the box like a glittering fish

and holding it up to the light

of a dirty bulb.

I want to comment on how artfully Kooser chooses his descriptive words: the “thin brown air”, “damp carpet” - can you smell the mustiness? And especially the sharp footfalls - the implication, from the way it is worded, is that they might just as well be the sound of nails in his coffin lid.

There are several observant details in the lines that follow, and then this:

You’ve seen him somewhere before.

He’s wearing the green leisure suit

you threw out with the garbage,

and the Christmas tie you hated,

and the ventilated wingtip shoes

you found in your father’s closet

and wore as a joke.

In Nelson Howard Miller’s comments yesterday, he talked about how the scant, late-season grapes and nuts were for the squirrels, not the people. Ted Kooser now makes you realize, in humble old age, the squirrel in this poem, more or less, could be you.

On a personal note, my late mother-in-law, Bernice Appoy, donated all of her late husband’s clothing to the church in downtown Port-of-Spain, including the suits he wore for special occasions. She once said it made her smile whenever she saw someone walking down the street wearing them, as if the ghost of her late husband was around, somewhere, looking after her.

Kooser ends his poem with a thought that might run parallel to Richard Blanco’s El Florida Room - that those things which have grown familiar to you over a lifetime (even if, in this case, you try to be rid of them) will reel you back in:

when you have grown old and thin

and no longer particular,

and the things you once thought

you were rid of forever

have taken you back in their arms.

An interesting discussion on the concept of belonging, identity, and the arc of time, done in very simple, observational words. Ted Kooser makes it look effortless, though we know it’s not. That’s why he was a poet laureate.

Once again this is Steve Spanoudis for theotherpages.org.

You can read the full text online at the Poetry Foundation website (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42631/in-the-basement-of-the-goodwill-store), where you can also listen to Ted Kooser reading and commenting on the poem.

Thank you for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media.

Labor Day weekend, rainy and cool, and the second hatch of barn swallows are still in their nest under the eaves, three of them, downy and mewing, their beaks like buds just opening, while the rest of the swallows, an extended family of a dozen or more including the year’s first hatch, wheel round and round this axis, crying, as if to unwind the invisible thread that holds them here, with winter coming.

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes on a pile of broken dishes by the house; a tall man too, says the length of the bed in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man, says the Bible with a broken back on the floor below the window, dusty with sun; but not a man for farming, say the fields cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves covered with oilcloth, and they had a child, says the sandbox made from a tractor tire. Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole. And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames. It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste. And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard like branches after a storm—a rubber cow, a rusty tractor with a broken plow, a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

the poet unpacks the toolbox

This week I thought it might be nice to take a look at my poetry toolbox. As of yet, I have not really spoken about the craft of poetry. At some point, I would love to delve into my views about poetry and how it relates to something started long ago and how that ties into my voice as a poet. But this week we will simply look at the tools I use on a regular basis.…

I love poetry. I love Nebraska. And, so, it's not so surprising that I love Ted Kooser too.

This linked story from NPR got me excited. Minnesota-born composer Maria Schneider and singer Dawn Upshaw teamed up to set some of Kooser's poems from Winter Morning Walks to music. The results are wonderful.

Photo Credit: Caroline Fitzpatrick

Late February

By Ted Kooser

The first warm day,

and by mid-afternoon

the snow is no more

than a washing

strewn over the yards,

the bedding rolled in knots

and leaking water,

the white shirts lying

under the evergreens.

Through the heaviest drifts

rise autumn’s fallen

bicycles, small carnivals

of paint and chrome,

the Octopus

and Tilt-A-Whirl

beginning to turn

in the sun…

Read the rest of the poem at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171331 via www.poetryfoundation.com.

Ted Kooser was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his book of poems, Delights & Shadows, and he served as the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 - 2006. Read his biography at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ted-kooser.