Ted+Kooser,+2004-2006


 * Ted Kooser (2004-2006) **

Ted Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa in 1939. He received his B.A. from Iowa State and his M.A. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of ten collections of poetry, including //Delights & Shadows// (2004); //Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison// (2000), which won the 2001 Nebraska Book Award for poetry; //Weather Central// (1994); //One World at a Time// (1985); and //Sure Signs// (Pittsburgh, 1980).

Kooser’s fiction and non-fiction books include //Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry// (Copper Canyon, 2003) written with fellow poet and longtime friend, Jim Harrison; and //Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps// (2002), which won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003.

Honors include two NEA fellowships in poetry, a Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize from //Columbia//, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. In the fall of 2004, Kooser was appointed the Library of Congress's thirteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. He is a visiting professor in the English department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He lives on an acreage near the village of Garland, NE, with his wife Kathleen Rutledge, the editor of the //Lincoln Journal Star//.

code Slap of the screen door, flat knock of my grandmother's boxy black shoes on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride out to the edge and then, toed in with a furious twist and heave, a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands and hangs there shining for fifty years over the mystified chickens, over the swaying nettles, the ragweed, the clay slope down to the creek, over the redwing blackbirds in the tops of the willows, a glorious rainbow with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.
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