Red Stilts (paperback)

by Ted Kooser

Overview

Red Stilts finds Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser at the top of his imaginative and storytelling powers. Here are the richly metaphorical, imagistically masterful, clear and accessible poems for which he has become widely known. Kooser writes for an audience of everyday readers and believes poets “need to write poetry that doesn’t make people feel stupid.” Each poem in Red Stilts strives to reveal the complex beauties of the ordinary, of the world that’s right under our noses. Right under Kooser’s nose is rural America, most specifically the Great Plains, with its isolated villages, struggling economy, hard-working people and multiple beauties that surpass everything wrecked, wrong, or in error.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556596490
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	670,414
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ted Kooser received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Delights and Shadows, and also served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States. As Poet Laureate, he established a weekly newspaper column, "American Life in Poetry," which is carried in over 150 newspapers, as well as online, and has an estimated circulation of three and a half million readers around the world. Kooser is the author of over twenty books, including five for children. He lives in a small town in Nebraska.

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

Spring Landscape

A wake of black waves foamy with pebbles follows the plow, rolls all the way up to the fence, slaps into the grass and trickles back, while farther out a spray of white gulls,
wings like splashes, are splashing down.
Spring on the prairie, a sky reaching forever in every direction, and here at my feet,
distilled from all that blue, a single drop caught in the spoon of a leaf, a robin’s egg.


A Woman and Two Men

I was past in an instant. It was raining,
just softly, after a morning-long shower,
no sounds but the hiss of the pavement,
my wipers whupping on low. Two men in hardhats were parked on the shoulder in a truck with a ladder rack and a bed full of tools. A woman driving a pickup with a camper had pulled up a few yards behind them and had walked up the road to the passenger’s side, her hair wet,
her arms wrapped about her. She had boots, a fringed leather jacket with beads on the fringe, and jeans with galaxies of rhinestones on the pockets. The man on the passenger’s side had rolled down his window, but only partway, and was staring out over the hood while the driver leaned far forward and over to talk,
his shoulder pressed into the wheel,
all this in a flash, those three at the side of the highway, the fourth glancing over in passing. I could in that instant feel something common between us, among us,
around us, within us. It was more than a light April rain playing over a road.


Up the Block

Maybe you saw me pass by, walking,
or maybe you didn’t. I raised a hand in a tentative wave, but you were intent upon your watering, as if to make sure the spray from the hose fell evenly over your small plot of petunias, purple
, pink, and white. The nozzle was yellow,
of plastic, much like a showerhead,
sweeping or brushing the bright drops evenly, lacquering over the flowers,
the dark purple ones deeper in color under the layers of glazes, and the pink brighter, too. The white looked the same,
but you’d probably planted those there mostly to set off the others. From one end to the other you slowly and gently swept the soft whiskbroom of droplets,
enrapt, or so it appeared, by what you saw sprinkling out of your hand,
upon which I could see drops forming,
each diamond-bright on a knuckle,
and I’d guess they were cold, perhaps even numbing, but you’d gotten hold of a rainbow, and couldn’t let go.

Table of Contents

I

A Letter 5

II

Recital 11

For a Friend, Ten Years Dead 12

House Moving 13

Ohio Blue Tip 14

An Overnight Snow 15

Mother and Child 16

Helping 17

At Dusk, in December 18

Bread 19

Winter Deaths 20

At the Salvation Army Store 21

Another World 22

After a Heavy Snow 23

A Letter from Never Before 24

Dropped Ceiling 25

III

Spring Landscape 29

Man at a Bulletin Board 30

At Dawn 31

In April 32

A Floating Bottle 33

Buttons 34

A Caesura 35

A Portrait Photograph 36

Rain after Dark 37

A Woman and Two Men 38

Vulture 39

Training to Be Blind 40

Tarnish 41

Farmyard Light 42

Starling 43

Cover the Earth 44

IV

A Town Somewhere 47

Raspberry Patch 48

Sounds of a Summer Night 50

Noon Whistle 51

Vespers 52

A Broken Sidewalk 53

A Place under a Roof 54

The Dead Vole 55

Apron 56

A Heron 57

A Shadow 58

Up the Block 59

Rabbit Hutches 60

Tree Frog 61

Farm Wagon 62

Red Stilts 63

V

In Early August 67

The Couple 68

A Roadside Cemetery 69

Autumn Equinox 70

Cleaning a Chimney 71

Sixtieth Reunion Banquet 72

A Moth, a Moon 73

Suitcase 74

Shame 75

Driving to Dwight 77

Battleship Gray 78

Fairgrounds 79

On the Market 80

Deer Path 81

Woolly Caterpillar 82

Applause 83

About the Author 84