Overview
Like a flash of lightning it came to him-the unathletic high school student Ted Kooser saw a future as a famous poet that promised everything: glory, immortality, a bohemian lifestyle (no more doing dishes, no more cleaning his room), and, particularly important to the lonely teenager, girls! Unlike most kids with a sudden ambition, Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and thirteenth poet laureate of the United States, made good on his dream. But glory was a long time coming, and along the way Kooser lived the life that has made his poetry what it is, as deeply grounded in family, work, and the natural world as it is attuned to the nuances of language. Just as so much of Kooser's own writing weaves geography, history, and family stories into its measures, so does this first critical biography consider the poet's work and life together: his upbringing in Iowa, his studies in Nebraska with poet Karl Shapiro as mentor, his career in insurance, his family life, his bout with cancer, and, always, his poetry. Combining a fine appreciation of Kooser's work and life, this book finally provides a fuller and more complex picture of a writer who, perhaps more than any other, has brought the Great Plains and the Midwest, lived large and small, into the poetry of our day.
Full Product Details
Author: Mary K. Stillwell
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Imprint: Bison Books
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 2.80cm
, Length: 21.60cm
Weight: 0.572kg
ISBN: 9780803243866
ISBN 10: 0803243863
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 01 September 2013
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
"""Ted Kooser is an important American poet who achieved a national reputation while living and working almost entirely outside the centers of literary power. Mary K. Stillwell's carefully researched new book provides biographical information never before available. This is a uniquely useful study of Kooser's life and work."" - Dana Gioia, poet and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts ""Mary K. Stillwell's biography, The Life and Poetry of Ted Kooser, is not only carefully, clearly researched and presented, but a project of genuine love. Longtime Kooser fans will cheer for more details illuminating our beloved favorite poet. New Kooser readers will find the book so inviting they too make a lifetime friend."" - Naomi Shihab Nye, author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East"
Mary K. Stillwell's biography, The Life and Poetry of Ted Kooser , is not only carefully, clearly researched and presented, but a project of genuine love. Longtime Kooser fans will cheer for more details illuminating our beloved favorite poet. New Kooser readers will find the book so inviting they too make a lifetime friend. --Naomi Shihab Nye, author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East<br> --Naomi Shihab Nye (03/05/2013)
Author Information
A Nebraska native, Mary K. Stillwell has studied writing in New York and, with Ted Kooser, on the plains and earned her PhD in plains literature from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She served as coeditor of Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry and has published her poetry widely in literary magazines and journals as well as a number of anthologies. Her full-length collection of poems is Moving to Malibu.
