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from the issue of January 31, 2008
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Kooser's new book chronicles 22 years of Valentine's prose
BY KELLY BARTLING, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
For Valentine's Day 1986, Ted Kooser wrote "Pocket Poem" and sent the tender, thoughtful composition to 50 women friends, starting an annual tradition that would persist for the next 21 years. Printed on postcards, the poems were mailed to a list of recipients that eventually grew to more than 2,700 women all over the country.
"Valentines," a new book out by Kooser, published by University of Nebraska Press, collects Kooser's 22 years of Valentine's Day poems, complemented with illustrations by Robert Hanna and a new poem appearing for the first time.
Kooser's Valentine poems encompass all the facets of the holiday: the traditional hearts and candy, the brilliance and purity of love, the quiet beauty of friendship, and the bitter-sweetness of longing. Some of the poems use the word Valentine, others do not, but there is never any doubt as to the purpose of Kooser's creations.
"I'm pretty enthusiastic about this book," Kooser said. "It has these marvelous pen and ink illustrations by Bob, who's a very dear friend of mine, and I like that he put my dog, Alice, in almost every drawing." Hanna is a retired architect who spends his time painting, illustrating, and teaching art workshops throughout the Great Plains.
Kooser said interest in publishing his legendary Valentines prompted a 10-year collection by University of Nebraska at Omaha art professor Bonnie O'Connell, and a 20-year edition in 2006 by Sam and Sally Green from Waldron, Wash.
"These were limited editions that are no longer available," Kooser said, "so I like the idea of having a trade edition that will have some reach to it. I think it will do well."
Kooser, presidential professor of English at UNL, is former U.S. poet laureate and 2005 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his work, "Delights and Shadows." In addition to his many volumes of poetry, he is the author of "The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets," and coauthor with Steve Cox of "Writing Brave and Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing," both available in Bison Books editions from the NU Press.
"For many years I have been a recipient of Ted Kooser's incredible Valentines," said poet and novelist Ellen Gilchrist. "Valentine's Day became my favorite holiday because there was never any sadness, only the knowledge that usually, on the actual Valentine's Day - and how he achieved this, I'll never know - these beautiful small sonnets would arrive and I'd carry them around and show them to everyone I knew. I can only hope that the readers of this book will have some part of the great pleasure it gave me to read these poems."
Publication of "Valentines" was possible through grants provided by the offices of the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor for Research at UNL.
Kooser is admittedly a hopeless romantic and his Valentines reflect his youthful goal of gaining female attention, and his admiration for his many female friends.
"I'm in my 60s, but I, too, was once young and felt flashy as a red-winged blackbird," Kooser says, calling to mind his poem, "A Poetry Reading" (from Poetry Home Repair Manual).
Once you were young along a river, tree to tree,
with sleek black wings and
red shoulders.
You sang for yourself but all of them
listened to you.
Now you're an old blue heron
with yellow eyes
and a gray neck tough as a snake.
You open your book on its spine,
a split fish,
and pick over the difficult ribs,
turning your better eye down
to the work
of eating your words as you go.
Kooser said in his "young and flashy" years he saw the benefit of a career in poetry as provoking the "adoration of women."
"That was what I was most interested in. In those years," he said, "I desperately needed some sort of a gimmick, for I was thin and pimply, my palms sweated, and my breath was sour from smoking the Chesterfields that despite the claims of magazine advertising had failed to make me irresistible. I got the idea that being a poet might make me attractive. It didn't occur to me for a long time that in order to earn the title of 'poet,' I ought to have written at least one poem. Being a poet was looking the part.
"Today I read poems, I write poems, and at times, yes, sometimes for hours on end, I forget about women."
The newly published poem from the collection is one written to his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, titled "Hog-Nosed Snake." It's a surprise from a romantic that he said he hopes readers will enjoy as much as Kathleen did. More about the book is at www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Valentines,673421.aspx.
A special event, "Valentines from Ted Kooser," is Feb. 9 at the Rococo Theater in Lincoln, as a benefit fund-raiser for the NU Press. Information on that event is at the Press Web site (www.nebraskapress.unl.edu).
GO TO: ISSUE OF JANUARY 31
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