Ted Kooser

The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way - engaging, compelling, even beautiful.

— Ted Kooser

If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems…

— Ted Kooser

There's nothing wrong with delighting in what you do. In fact, most of the fun you'll have as a poet will come…

— Ted Kooser

“Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody…

— Ted Kooser

When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.

— Ted Kooser

Every poet gets to choose what kind of community he or she serves with the poems, and it's true that there is…

— Ted Kooser

I had in effect been thrown out of graduate school because I was a lousy graduate student, and I had to find…

— Ted Kooser

When I was a kid, I suppose I got more praise for being able to draw things and paint things than I…

— Ted Kooser

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

Keeping a journal is like taking good care of one’s heart.

— Ted Kooser

There's always been what I would call the William Carlos Williams strain, in which poems of simplicity and clarity are valued by…

— Ted Kooser

I like the poem on the page and not at the podium. I like to address the poem in peace and quiet,…

— Ted Kooser

a happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was…

— Ted Kooser

Wallace Stevens had more time to write as an insurance agent. He was a bond lawyer and I know that insurance company…

— Ted Kooser

I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a…

— Ted Kooser

In my work, I really try to look at ordinary things quite closely to see if there isn't a little bit of…

— Ted Kooser

I try to be realistic with students. And say that there's a good chance that they're not going to get a creative…

— Ted Kooser

“Mother (fragment) ...You asked me if I would be sad when it happened and I am sad. But the iris I moved…

— Ted Kooser

“a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.”

— Ted Kooser

It may very well be that people in San Francisco don't think we have any culture in Nebraska, but we have a…

— Ted Kooser

I've written some poems that are in the middle ground - who are in between very challenging and abundantly clear, but there's…

— Ted Kooser

Every time somebody writes a theory about where literature's going, that person is not only contributing thought but nudging things to happen…

— Ted Kooser

Valentine's Day is the poet's holiday.

— Ted Kooser

For a while the creative writing community sort of sprung out of places like Iowa and Syracuse. The graduates sort of went…

— Ted Kooser

Now the seasons are closing their files on each of us, the heavy drawers full of certificates rolling back into the tree…

— Ted Kooser