Number 37: John Keats " On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

--John Keats

Hap Notes: First of all, the picture of Keats (1795-1821) on the right is a 'lifemask' taken from Keats while he was very much alive in 1816- it's not one of those freaky death masks like they did of Washington or John Dillinger (there are two people who rarely occupy a sentence together!)

Keats, one of the most famous of the English Romantic poets, is talking about reading a translation of Homer by George Chapman (1559-1634). Chapman paraphrased much of the difficult dactylic hexameter of the original Greek into a more earthy and understandable English iambic pentameter or hexameter. There is nothing quite like reading a translation that reaches your heart and that's what Keats is so excited about. Keats knew Latin, most English school kids did, but not Greek. Keats had read other translations of Homer before (Pope's and Dryden's certainly). The Chapman translation was a revelation to him.

Keats' friend and teacher, Charles Cowden Clarke, gave Keats the Chapman translation and they stayed up all night reading it. Keats kept stopping in the middle of the reading to exclaim with excitement over some new passage that enchanted him. That morning, Clarke found this sonnet on the breakfast table. Keats had whipped out this (arguably) most famous of all Petrarchan sonnets in a couple of hours. (This made me exclaim aloud when I read this story!) I have no idea whether they are reading the Iliad, the Odyssey or both (Chapman translated both of them- I like to think they read both of them in one fevered sitting.)

Just imagine them staying up all night by firelight and candle-light reading this work. Have you ever read by candle-light deep into the night? There's a certain magic in it. (and a certain strain- it involves close reading.)

Keats is so excited by the translation that he mixes things up a bit. It was Balboa who "discovered" the Pacific ocean and was the first European to set eyes on it. Cortez actually first saw the Valley of Mexico from a peak in Panama in the province of Darien. Keats had been reading William Robertson's History of America and mixed up the two stories. He was going from memory and excited and tired and he came up with this brilliant poem so let's cut him a bit of historical slack here. Most of us could not write anything half so wonderful with Google and all 13 volumes of the Oxford English dictionary at our command. The point is, imagine what it was like to come over a peak of a mountain and see the vast, gorgeous expanse of the Pacific ocean for the first time- how heart-breakingly awestruck you would be.

The "new planet" he's talking about is probably Uranus which was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1781, important in the poem because it was not known to the ancients from the Greek isles he talks about earlier in the poem. So it's another "new" world, like the Cortez reference.

The octave (first eight lines) talks about the Greek isles and Homer, describing Homer's "territory", more or less. Homer is "deep browed" because he is thought to be brilliant and also sculptors always depict him with a brow wrinkled in thought. The sestet (last six lines) are what is called a "volta", a change as the poet now talks about the new worlds of discovery. Keats says he feels like he just discovered a "new world" with Chapman's translation.

The problem with all works that are translated is that you cannot read the words in the language yourself so you are counting on someone else with knowledge of the language to do so for you. Not everyone's translations will get the "feel" of the work- we are counting on another person to interpret each word for us, they are the filter the words are going through. When Faegle's translation of the Aeneid came out in 2006, everyone was aflutter, even now with a work written in the first century! (I liked it but I'm partial to the Fitzgerald version and the Browning version. Rolfe Humphries is good too. But the bits and pieces I've read of C.S. Lewis's version made me swoon.) My point is (yeah, I have one besides showing off how many translations of the Aeneid I've read (7)- I got obssessive) is that a good translation of a familiar work is like a bolt of divine lightning striking you. That's what Keats is so keyed up about.

I suppose I'm explaining it to death, here, since Keats' last four lines are elegantly perfect in their description.

Keats, by the by, was not a well-known poet during his short life. He trained to be a doctor, gave it up after he'd been fully trained in pharmacy and devoted his life, instead, to poetry. We'll surely do more Keats in the course of this year.

Here's a good Keats quote: "If poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all."

You can find more Keats here: www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/66

Number 36: Naomi Shihab Nye: "The Traveling Onion"

The Traveling Onion

It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship – why I haven't been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe. – Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.

— Naomi Shihab Nye

Hap Notes: Naomi Shihab Nye (born 1952), currently a resident of San Antonio, Texas, comes from a family of mixed cultures. Her mom was an American and her father, Aziz Shihab, was a Palestinian journalist whose long career included work with the BBC, the St. Louis Globe Democrat, the Jerusalem Times, the San Antonio Express News and the Dallas Morning News as well as starting the American paper The Arab Star. Nye spent time in Jerusalem when she was 14 with her family and the cultural mix certainly influenced her life and work creating a sensitive awareness of the similarities and differences of the cultures of the world. Her work often carries the colors of that theme.

Nye has written children's books and poetry anthologies as well as poetry books. She has won the Pushcart Prize a whopping four times, the Paterson poetry prize and many notable book citations from the American Library Association.

"The Traveling Onion" is a seamless blend of layers with almost as many layers as an onion has itself. Cooks know that when an onion is put into a stew, or in fact any kind of broth or water, the water content in the onion, if cooked long enough, will cause the onion to sort of melt into the liquid. It's original physical presence gets reduced to merely a wisp of translucence and a taste. It can literally disappear, too, leaving only its flavor behind.

Now, you peel the layers from this poem, which has to do with so much, starting with its origins in India and ending up in a stew in America. But there's way more than that in the words. So much richness in this poem. Savor it.

Here's a great quote from Nye: "Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”

You can find more Nye here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/naomi-shihab-nye

Number 34: Elizabeth Bishop "Filling Station"

Filling Station


Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

Hap Notes: Elizabeth Bishop's (1911- 1979) early childhood was composed of shuttling from one relative to another because her father died when she was 18 months old and her mother was committed to a mental institution not long after that. (Remember what her idea of family must be as you read this poem carefully- just a suggestion.) Bishop was a shy woman and a very precise one.

Once again I am forced to take back something I said about Robert Lowell. It's true that he wrestled over every word in his poetry but he was not afraid, and in fact relished the process, of tinkering with published work. He was constantly revising and picking at a poem. Bishop, who is, I think one of America's best poets, published only 101 poems her whole life. She was a polisher and each of her poems sparkle like gems. Now, that's what I call deliberating over each word. By the way, Lowell and Bishop were very close friends.

First, let's talk about the poem, then we'll go back to Bishop. It is obvious that the speaker in the poem has stopped at this station. A cursory glance at an ESSO station as one passed would not be so detailed. (ESSO stations are the first gas stations created by Standard Oil -Ess and Oh, the phonetic pronunciation of the letters S (Standard) and O (Oil). Standard changed their name to Exxon in 1973. ESSO is still used in Canada, I think.) So this is an old Standard Oil franchise run by a family which seems to be populated by mostly men.

Those of us old enough to recall old family filling stations like this will recognize things in this poem that younger people don't see. This gas station sells no convenience items like milk or bread. It may not even have a pop machine. These gas stations were often attached to a small house. "Do they live in the station?" Maybe. America was a much dirtier (in the sense of grease, oil, dirt, litter and pollution) when this poem was written. I can smell the thick, heavy odor of the grease and oil of this place as the poet describes it.

The sons may be filling up the tank of the car with gas- there were no "self-service" pumps then, the gas station employees did that. They are "quick and saucy" and probably glad to have some business. (The smart-ass in me wants to point out that back in those days businesses often liked having customers and were happy to see them and worked to help them.) The comic books provide the only note of "certain" color because they are not dirty, hence they are probably newer and being read by somebody who sits on the wicker furniture with the comfy dog. Admittedly the reading of comic books does not imply intellectual pursuits but it does indicate a certain youthfulness of the sons.

I've attempted to show pictures of some of the elements in the poem on the pictures to the right (top is a taboret, the next is the daisy stitch and the third is a begonia, which often have furry, hairy leaves.) The design touches in the poem are feminine, the wicker, the plant, the doily, regardless of their greasy and dirty exterior.

I've gone into detail about the particulars of this poem because I keep reading analyses of this poem written by people who've never seen such a thing as a "family" filling station and often misconstrue the poem as being one of haughty distaste for the working class. The poet doesn't particularly dislike the men working there, but she does notice the dirt, like most women would, I might add. If you are young enough, you've probably never seen a place this filthy.

It's a woman who would notice the dirt and a woman who would embroider a doily. Somebody at the station organizes the oil cans in a row. Somebody waters the plant or it would be dead. There is an order here. Some of it is just the difference between what a woman would do and a man would do to TRY to make a place look good. Somebody there loved the men there enough to put out creature comforts not necessary to the running of the business. When she says "Be careful with that match" it could be the poet just making a remark about the oiliness of the place or somebody (who?) could be lighting a cigarette.

The passing cars are "high strung," racing by, but the people at the filling station do not seem to be. Whoever it is that loved the men at the filling station is fighting a losing battle versus the grease and oil of the place. Now, I'll let you do your own work on the poem. Just wanted you to see what Bishop is describing because she is a close observer of life and a close reading will yield up interesting things but it won't if you don't know what she's describing. Bishop's poetry is full to the brim with her sharp observations about the way things look.

Bishop traveled a lot. Due to an inheritance from someone she had the wherewithal to do so. She was a lesbian although she and Robert Lowell toyed with the idea of getting married. (Lowell wrote a poem about this- it's called "Water" if you want to look it up.) She was U.S. Poet Laureate 1949-1950. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and had Guggenheim Fellowships etc. etc.

Okay, should I drop the other shoe? I will, a little. I know the poem is somewhat amusing but I see it as something heartfelt, too. I used to feel like I was missing something as I got to the end of the poem. Now, I suspect the poet wants us to feel this way.

When the poet asks "Why oh why?" I think it's a comment on how futile it seems to love this dirty place- the decorations seem odd in a place so laden with grease and oil. Why would anybody bother? It's good to think that there is love in even in this dirty, oily place which is so opposite of what one expects love to be like. Love isn't always clean and neat and tidy, but it tries. Don't use this analysis for a term paper. Just warning you.

Here's a good quote by Bishop: "All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'. "

You can find more Bishop here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/elizabeth-bishop

Number 35: Robert Hayden "Those Winter Sundays"

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

-- Robert Hayden


Hap Notes: Robert Hayden (1913-1980) studied writing poetry under W.H. Auden at the University of Michigan and you can see traces of Auden's fingerprints on Hayden's brilliant poetry. Once again, a poet so gifted that one does not immediately see the craft and intelligence and work in the ease of the verse.

Hayden's childhood was one of exile, in a way. Born in Detroit, his parents gave him up when he was born. He was raised by foster parents (and took their name) who were as good to him as they were vicious in punishment. (Read his poem "The Whipping" sometime.) Parental arguments were frequent in the Hayden household. He had severe eye problems (note the very thick glasses.) This made it impossible to play sports like the other kids (I believe Detroit may be like much of the south, Alabama and Texas et. al.- where sports are an integral part of the life of a boy.) Reading was one of his only comforts.

Hayden ran into a bit of controversy in the 60s when other black poets and readers thought he should have identified his race with more vehemence in his poetry. The 60s were a wasp's nest of problems: civil rights, Vietnam etc. Hayden was of the Baha'i faith (he converted from Baptist when he married his wife in the early 1940s) and their belief is in the spiritual unity of all people and Hayden stuck to his guns. People are people first- race is a made-up difference. This was a very brave stance to take and he may have been a weak-looking bespectacled fella but he had the heart of a lion.

It wasn't that Hayden didn't understand the civil right movement. He was acutely aware of the problems of race in America and he fought for rights in his own way. It was that he did not believe that the violence and the harsh words would solve anything. I know this sounds like common sense but there's nothing common about it, as we all should know, but, obviously, do not.

This poem, especially after reading some details about his life, needs little augmentation from me. His father is breaking up wood for the furnace or cook stove that warmed the house. His father wakes up early, even on Sunday, to do this. His father polishes his "Sunday" shoes as he sleeps. Loneliness and love are the two human conditions that need warmth. The poem may be perfect in it's execution. The "chronic angers" of the house could be arguments, punishments or just plain coldness. It's a good poem to read in January when the weather is cold and you can feel the father's cracked and achy hands, feel the cold around you.

Hayden taught at Fisk University and the University of Michigan, I think. He was poet laureate of the U.S. from 1976-1978 (most folks only do it for a year). He was the first African-American to hold the post.

Here's a good Hayden quote: “[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.”


You can find more Hayden here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-hayden

Number 34: Hughes Means excerpt from "Antigonish"

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
-- Hughes Means


Hap Notes: I'll just bet you remember this little snippet of verse from William Hughes Means' (1875-1965) college play "Antigonish." Means wrote the verse for a play he penned when he was a student at Harvard in 1899. He is not noted for writing any more verse that people remember but this one is sure stuck good and proper in the memory, eh?

Hughes Means (he dropped the William professionally) did something else that was pretty darn exciting, though, at least in terms of writing and poetry. He was a steadfast believer in the educational principles of Dewey which included personal, creative self- expression in children. To that end he developed a "new" class which would teach children to unleash their creativity. He called it "creative writing." Perhaps you've heard of it?

He started teaching this revolutionary class in 1920 at the Lincoln School, a laboratory school run by Columbia University's teacher's college. The repercussions, fruition and consequent products of this class are enormous. Before this class students in writing and English were strictly taught grammar. Now, I know grammar can be a sore point right now when scanning the internet. But those "creative writing" classes spawned by Means undeniably created lasting beauty in prose and poetry.

It's ironic that the "man who wasn't there" when it comes to writing is actually Means himself, the creator of new generation of writers and nobody even sent him a thank-you card.

So let this post stand as a thank-you card for his devotion to teaching and progressive education.

Here are a couple of marvelous Means quotes: "You have something to say. Something of your very own. Try to say it. Don't be ashamed of any real thought or feeling you have. Don't undervalue it. Don't let the fear of others prevent you from saying it... You have something to say, something that no one else in the world has said in just your way of saying it."

and

"Writing is an outward expression of instinctive insight that must be summoned from the vastly deep of our mysterious selves. Therefore, it cannot be taught; indeed, it cannot even be summoned; it can only be permitted."

and my particular favorite: "Poetry is when you talk to yourself."

Number 33: Robert Lowell "Dolphin"

Dolphin

My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,

a captive as Racine, the man of craft,

drawn through his maze of iron composition

by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre.

When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body

caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,

the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . .

I have sat and listened to too many

words of the collaborating muse,

and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,

not avoiding injury to others,

not avoiding injury to myself--

to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, 

an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting

my eyes have seen what my hand did.



Hap Notes: This heartbreaking confessional poem was written towards the end of the tempestuous life of Robert Lowell (1917-1977.) Lowell 's life was difficult and his poetry is even more so. The critic Randall Jarrell and Lowell coined the term "willfully obscure" to define Lowell's poetry (I think Lowell actually said it) and the description fits him the best of any readable poet you will encounter.

Lowell's life was marked with two things: his genius and his mental illness (manic depression-they call it bi-polar disorder now) and they both contribute to the myth of this arguably most influential poet of the last half of the 20th century. His failed marriages (3), his manic attacks, his deep depressions and his poetry were all equally sensational in their day and it's hard to clear off the personal stuff when his poetry is so darn confessional- a genre he pretty much invented. His poetic stylings changed over his career from stiffly formal to the poem we see above- finely wrought and seemingly casual.

The diagnosis of manic depression in this era gets applied to people who are a little too free with their credit cards one day and somewhat morose several days later. That ain't Lowell. This extremely well-read and cultured man had tumultuous attacks that ended up with him in a locked room in a mental institution with no belt or shoelaces so he could not harm himself. He got shock treatment and pumped full of Thorazine before Lithium came onto the market as a popular cure (found to work for the illness in 1949 it was approved for treatment by the FDA in 1970.) After the "cures" he noted that he felt "frizzled, stale and small." He told us that in his poetry. His confessional poetry is moving because he genuinely had something to confess. He made quite a mess of things when he was manic- he was more contentious than usual, thought he was the Virgin Mary or John the Baptist etc., insulted friends and colleagues, flirted with nurses and made plans to run away with them. He was animated and charming and fevered.

He was placed in psychiatric hospitals at least a dozen times over the course of 40 years but in spite of that his children speak of him as a loving father. Former students (he taught writing and literature at Harvard) recall his encyclopedic knowledge of literature and history. He wrestled with every word he wrote. No word, no comma, no phrase, no preposition is there casually.

Let's get to the poem first- just a cursory amount of stuff to get you started. "Dolphin" was an affectionate name he used for his third wife, Guiness heiress Lady Caroline Blackwood. Racine was a favorite writer of Lowell's and "man of craft" and "iron composition" certainly refers to Racine's invention and use of the dodecasyllabic alexandrine (which is a fancy way of saying a 12 syllable meter) and his sharply difficult craftsmanship. A "hang-man's knot" in addition to the usual reference is also a fisherman's knot. There's some fishy stuff in this poem- do you see it?- aside from the eelnet (the fyke net pictured above- see the tapered cone shape of it?) Also fishing oriented is the "craft" and "bowing." Doesn't "eel fighting" sound like awful and terrible work? When he says the book is "half-fiction" what do you suppose that means the other half is, eh? (This caused some trouble because he used actual quotes from loved ones' letters in the poems in this book, The Dolphin- which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974).

It's interesting to note that Racine's pattern of tragedy in his plays is that the characters know about their fatal flaw but can do nothing to change it. Lowell published a verse translation of Racine's Phaedra. Phaedra is a good play- helps if you've read it when looking at the poem but you could just read a summation of it somewhere and get a grip on it. Critics have said that the "Dolphin" is also Lowell's way of symbolizing his love of the universe in the form of his mate.

The poem is heartbreaking because Lowell is asking us all, not just his family and friends, for a bit of forgiveness for his history of storms and horrors. Biographer Ian Hamilton said he didn't think Lowell's poetry was worth the messes he made. But, I defy you to find a more well-wrought poem than "Waking Early Sunday Morning" (which we won't ever do here because there's a book's worth of stuff in it and it's long and we're going for short here.) Even if you don't understand every nuance of Lowell you come away with the feeling that something deep, troubling and important happened in the poem. (And Ian Hamilton was a bloody twit sometimes- just sayin'.)

Much of Lowell's poetry has to do with his Boston ancestry. You know the old verse by Samuel C. Bushnell? "Here's to the city of Boston/ The home of the bean and the cod/ Where the Cabots speak only to Lowells/ And the Lowells speak only to God." He was one of those Lowells; a distinguished family that included writers Amy Lowell and James Russell Lowell.

I have a vested interest in Lowell for a variety of reasons. I've been reading Lowell since I was 16 and I always knew there was something I vibrated to that bordered on mystical. When I was diagnosed manic depressive it took me several years to make the connection to Lowell- I can't say I was thinking about him much then. My illness is not as severe as his, I just faced a few boring suicide attempts, a few disrupted neighbors (all that glass breaking) and some scared-out-of-their-wits roommates. This isn't about me, though, it's about Lowell. But I understand the sad damage control that goes with these wearying attacks. And the miserable idiot stupor after it's all over. Lowell's poetry comforted me. (Eat that, Ian Hamilton. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.)

Lowell died of a heart attack in a cab in New York City. He was going to visit his ex-wife Elizabeth Hardwick. The lithium was working for him, after so many years of hurricane-like breakdowns. In his hands, he held a portrait of Lady Caroline Blackwood. They had to break his arms to release the portrait.

Here's a couple of good Lowell quotes: "I’m sure that writing isn’t a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can’t be taught, it can’t be what you use in teaching."

"Almost the whole problem of writing poetry is to bring it back to what you really feel, and that takes an awful lot of maneuvering."

You can find more Lowell here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-lowell

Number 32: Ted Kooser "Abandoned Farmhouse"

Abandoned Farmhouse

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

-- Ted Kooser


Hap Notes: Garsh, if you want to see what I call the "Literary Critics Tarantella" you can read critical works on the poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winning, former U.S. Poet Laureate (2004) Ted Kooser (born 1939). Why? Well, Kooser is not a puzzlebox, like many poets are. He's not a high-wire writing act balanced on a razor blade as he stands on his vocabularic head. He writes with a plain speaking Midwestern lexicon. He writes what he observes. He lets what he observed tell you the deep stuff. His poetry will hurt you but not with the grand flourish of a brandished rapier but with the natural burns and woes of everyday life- the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" as Shakespeare put it, with a bit of a flourish. This is flummoxing to some critics.

In "Abandoned Farmhouse" he gives us an inventory list of what is left. I'm sure your head put together stories and thoughts about what happened there and what kind of child played with toys that mimicked his rural life and what kind of suppers they had from the "sealed jars." Kooser gives you a lot of freedom to look around and make your own story (or not- you don't have to make up anything- nobody's forcing you to do anything.)

When I worked at the University of Minnesota at a scientific laboratory and the Journal of Biochemistry came out, all the scientists would pore through the work in the magazine looking for extraordinary work. When they read of a remarkable experiment; one that had a well-honed logical method and was crystal in its clarity and seemed to capture some unspoken thing nobody thought to write about; they would call it "elegant." Kooser's descriptive powers are elegant.

Kooser's poetry can be read in his books from beginning to end like an atlas and inventory of human life. Unlike most books of poetry, his books beg you to read all of them at once. The energy you get from the whole book will leave you speechless with the wonders of each day of life (well, maybe not you but me, anyway.)

Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa, grew up there and got his degree at Iowa State. He worked for years at the Lincoln Benefit Life Company in Nebraska. That's right, he and Wallace Stevens are the poets of the insurance business, both having full careers in insurance while they wrote. One can hardly accuse the insurance business of having a 'style' of poetry since Kooser's and Stevens' work are significantly different. But it IS a weird thing, no doubt, the insurance business being one that puts you in mind of the "man in the grey flannel suit."

Kooser is kind of like Frost without the icy bitter wit. His life in the Midwest certainly gets tempered by its quotidian domesticity- being a Midwesterner myself, I know the people, the area, the gritty common sense of the place ( I don't have much of it but I'm familiar).

I know I said that Kooser is not a puzzle box but let me amend that a bit to say, he's not a puzzle box any more than life is- which, I believe, is one of the steps of the Literary Critics Tarantella (oh yes, I can do that dance, too.)

Just as a quirky side note- this poem often reminds me of the life of Robert Frost- I don't know that it was Kooser's intention but it rings true for me. Oh, by the way, he studied writing poetry under Karl Shapiro at the University of Nebraska. (We've read him already- remember "Manhole Covers"? Another fella who made the critics dance the tarantella. And yes, I rhymed it on purpose.)

Here's a great Kooser quote that pretty much says (like his work does) it all: “I write for other people with the hope that I can help them to see the wonderful things within their everyday experiences. In short, I want to show people how interesting the ordinary world can be if you pay attention.”

You can fine more Kooser here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ted-kooser