Raft

by Ted Kooser

Overview

Delightfully universal, Raft by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ted Kooser travels the Midwest landscape, attuned to life’s shared experiences and emotions—illness, aging, beauty, and love.

Raft is our fourth collection of poetry from Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser. Open in his desire to write for the everyday reader, these poems maintain the open-handed and accessible style that thousands have come to love. Yet, deeply imagistic and metaphorically rich, Raft shows us that even the simplest of objects, the simplest of actions, can become a portal. A boy feeding a goldfish becomes a meditation on loneliness. Scraps of gauze open the door to a study on happiness. Both local and delightfully universal, Raft travels the Midwest landscape, attuned to the shared experiences and emotions of life—illness and aging, beauty and love. Some poems, nostalgia-wrapped, cradle elegies for lost family and friends. Adrift on life rafts of language, this book is a lesson in intentional observation, a celebration of the small, quiet wonders of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556597015
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	09/17/2024
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ted Kooser is one of America’s best-selling poets. A retired insurance executive and Presidential Professor Emeritus at The University of Nebraska, he served as United States Poet Laureate and won the Pulitzer prize for Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press).  As United States Poet Laureate, he launched and edited a weekly newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry,” which has an estimated circulation of over four and a half million readers around the world. Along with poetry, Kooser has published several popular children’s books, a memoir, and numerous collections of nonfiction. He lives near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife.

Hometown:

Garland, Nebraska

Date of Birth:

1939

Place of Birth:

Ames, Iowa

Education:

B.S., Iowa State University, 1962; M.A., University of Nebraska, 1968

Read an Excerpt

RAFT
At the said-to-be bottomless pond
at the sand pit, the raft we discovered
was a heavy barn door, maybe ten feet
by twelve, halfway in, halfway out
of the water where others had left it,
probably older boys, always the first
to find something good, use it a while,
then leave it for us, Billy and Larry,
Danny and me, floating it out onto
the water, wading in after it, holding
onto its edge as we slid down the slope
up to our shoulders, then one by one
helped each other climb on, soaked
and shivering, standing to balance,
arms spread, each to a corner, facing
each other, frightened but laughing,
not a forethought among us for a pole
to push out with, nor a plank for an oar,
as we trusted that door as it floated
not on but just under the surface,
one corner sinking, then slowly lifting
as another went down, ankle deep
over the cold, bottomless darkness.
Seventy years later, I still feel that door
sinking under my weight, can still see
the white faces of Larry and Billy
and Danny looking across into mine
as we held our arms wide, as if to keep
some wild, free, invisible creature
there at the center from running away,
and at eighty I know what it was.

THE DARKNESS PARK
Three hundred miles from home, we’ve come
for the stars. It’s one of the darkest places
anywhere, with no ambient light from the cities,
millions of glittering stars with a full bucket
of milk splashed down the middle, several
ghostly gray families taking orderly turns
at their telescopes, the ones waiting bent back
to look up, like bows strung with dizziness,
each getting ready to shoot themselves into
the heavens, but not yet. Instead being thrilled
to be wobbly but still on our feet, with the toes
of our dewy shoes right on the edge of forever.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Raft

“Affirms his genius for capturing simple folks, like a man raking his yard or a worker gathering grocery carts, with a beauty that tells us every soul has dignity."—Danny Heitman, NOLA.com

“Kooser has always been concerned with isolating moments and places that would have been easily missed or forgotten had he not chosen to memorialize them. People, of course, have played a significant part in those poems, but Raft is particularly keen to remind us of the importance of our fellow humans who have been relegated to the margins.”—David Starkey, California Review of Books

“For more than half a century . . . Kooser has been looking attentively at the world, translating his vision of it with a painter’s eye, a composer’s ear and a poet’s intuition for metaphor, and offering short, clear, alluring poems so that his readers, too, can 'see the life at play in everything.'”—John Cusatis, Post & Courier

“Raft is a book of great variety. . . . If Kooser has doubts about the value of his work, thank goodness he's writing and publishing it anyway. Raft is an excellent book and a welcome extension of an essential oeuvre.”—Robert M. West, Asheville Poetry Review

Praise for Ted Kooser

“Ted Kooser . . . has a genius for making the ordinary sacred.” —New York Times

“Kooser's poetry is understated yet manages to skillfully illuminate the small moments of life.”—Christian Science Monitor

“[Kooser] brushes poems over ordinary objects, revealing metaphysical themes the way an investigator dusts for fingerprints. His language is so controlled and convincing that one can't help but feel significant truths behind his lines.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

“There is a sense of quiet amazement at the core of all Kooser's work.”—Edward Hirsch, Washington Post

“Kooser is a master of the subjective description. Empathetic without sentimentality, his eye ranges over all sorts of everyday subjects and finds material everywhere wherever the unpredictable particularity of the world can be glimpsed.”—Georgia Review

From the Publisher