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from the issue of April 3, 2008
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American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Today we want to recognize newspaper employees by including a poem from the inside of a newsroom. David Tucker is deputy managing editor of the New Jersey "Star-Ledger" and has been a reporter and editor at the "Toronto Star" and the "Philadelphia Inquirer." He was on the "Star-Ledger" team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Mr. Tucker was awarded a Witter-Bynner fellowship for poetry in 2007 by former U. S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall.
Today's News
A slow news day, but I did like the
obit about the butcher
who kept the same store for 50 years.
People remembered
when his street was sweetly
roaring, aproned
with flower stalls and fish stands.
The stock market wandered,
spooked by presidential winks,
by micro-winds and the shadows
of earnings. News was stationed
around the horizon,
ready as summer clouds to thunder -
but it moved off and we covered
the committee meeting
at the back of the statehouse,
sat around on our desks,
then went home early. The birds
were still singing,
the sun just going down. Working
these long hours,
you forget how beautiful the early
evening can be,
the big houses like ships
turning into the night,
their rooms piled high with silence.
Poem copyright (c) 2006 by David Tucker. Reprinted from "Late for Work" by David Tucker, Mariner Books, 2006, by permission of the author. First printed in "Montana Journalism Review." Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. This column is made possible by the Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org) and supported by the UNL Department of English. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
GO TO: ISSUE OF APRIL 3
ARTS HEADLINES FOR APRIL 3
'Day Room' closes Theatrix season
American Life in Poetry
'Gypsy' to play the Lied, April 8-9
Hurt book sale is April 11-12
Takács Quartet performs April 10
733135S38104X
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