Quotes by Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser

A poem is a record of a discovery.

Discovery

Records

All night, this soft rain from The distant past. No wonder I sometimes Waken as a child.

Children

Past

Rain

Every poet gets to choose what kind of community he or she serves with the poems, and it’s true that there is a community for very difficult, challenging poetry. It’s a community that’s established itself over the last 80 years, that was originally, in effect, really started by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. They believed that poetry ought to contain learning, that it ought to rise upon all the learning that went before.

Challenges

Community

Kind

For a while the creative writing community sort of sprung out of places like Iowa and Syracuse. The graduates sort of went out, and they would found creative writing departments in the little colleges where they went, and then some of those would found other ones. I mean every college has got a creative writing department, so where are the jobs coming from? There are not any jobs out there.

College

Mean

Writing

I had in effect been thrown out of graduate school because I was a lousy graduate student, and I had to find a job, and I took the first job that came along. It happened to be a management trainee job in a life insurance company, and I just stayed. It was always, mainly, the idea was that I would support myself as a writer, and I knew I would have to have some sort of work, and it didn’t make a whole lot of difference to me what it was. I mean, I could have been a paper hanger or something for that matter.

Mean

School

Support

I like the poem on the page and not at the podium. I like to address the poem in peace and quiet, not on the edge of a folding chair with a full bladder. I can’t stand hearing a poem that I can’t see. I did a reading at Wayne State, and it ended with the comedy such occasions deserve. I’d seated myself on a piano bench, and discovered upon attempting to arise at the end that the varnish had softened and I was stuck fast. The hinge was to the front, under my knees, so that as I tried to get up, I merely opened the lid.

Benches

Piano

Reading

I try to be realistic with students. And say that there’s a good chance that they’re not going to get a creative writing teaching job, that there aren’t enough jobs to go around and the university faculties are cutting back on staff and that they may have to get some other kind of work. None of them wants to hear that, but it is true and I think I’m a good example for them of somebody who took the other route.

Cutting

Teaching

Writing

I’ve written some poems that are in the middle ground – who are in between very challenging and abundantly clear, but there’s a tremendous investment in the challenging poem, and it’s been going on so long that the whole infrastructure supporting it, a lot of critics and theorists and so on are deeply invested in maintaining that status.

Challenges

Investment

Long

If I don’t take the risk, I’ll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge.

Ifs

Risk

Wind

If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly big names in contemporary poetry and who write a book and I might like three or four poems in the book, but the rest of them don’t appeal to me personally; but I think that’s the way it really ought to be. I think it’s really a rare thing to like everything that somebody has written.

Book

Thinking

Writing

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Benches

Blue

Book

Care

Catholic

Cells

Challenges

Children

College

Community

Criticism

Cutting

Discovery

Facts

Firsts

Fun

Heart

Holiday

Ifs

Insurance Companies

Interest

Interesting

Investment

Journal

Kind

Lawyer

Light

Lightning

Long

Mean

Morning

One Day

Past

People

Perfect

Piano

Plans

Positive

Promise

Rain

Reading

Records

Risk

School

Simplicity

Special

Support

Teaching

Thinking

Thunderstorm

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Quotes by Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser

A poem is a record of a discovery.

All night, this soft rain from The distant past. No wonder I sometimes Waken as a child.

If I don’t take the risk, I’ll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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