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… — Ted Kooser Copy Share Image
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… — Ted Kooser Copy Share Image
The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way - engaging, compelling, even beautiful. — Ted Kooser Copy Share
If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
There's nothing wrong with delighting in what you do. In fact, most of the fun you'll have as a poet will come about during… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
“Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right. — Ted Kooser Copy Share
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… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
I had in effect been thrown out of graduate school because I was a lousy graduate student, and I had to find a job,… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
When I was a kid, I suppose I got more praise for being able to draw things and paint things than I did for… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
If I don't take the risk, I'll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge. — Ted Kooser Copy Share
There's always been what I would call the William Carlos Williams strain, in which poems of simplicity and clarity are valued by a different… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
I like the poem on the page and not at the podium. I like to address the poem in peace and quiet, not on… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
a happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
Wallace Stevens had more time to write as an insurance agent. He was a bond lawyer and I know that insurance company lawyers don't… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a lot of… — Ted Kooser Copy Share
