Can you handle one hour of the former poet laureate, Ted Kooser?

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Can you handle one hour of the former poet laureate, Ted Kooser?
August 07, 2008

Hello Poets and Poetry Lovers

If you're like me, your falling all over yourself now that open season for poetry submissions has begun. So I've been preparing poems for sending out. Or trying to.

I have managed to update an entire section of the website this week, which means the redesign is still under way. In addition to the update, I've added a new book review, and you're really going to love the blog posts I wrote this week. But if you can handle an hour of Ted Kooser, you'll love this issue of Hyperbole. I mean, it's hot!

Poetry Video Of The Week - Ted Kooser, former U.S. poet laureate
Updated World Class Poetry Pages
New World Class Poetry Pages - New Book Review
American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser
New World Class Poetry Blog Posts
Poetry Book Of The Week
Duotrope's Daily Market
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World Class Poetry Networking

Poetry Video Of The Week -
Former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser

Can you handle an hour of Ted Kooser, former U.S. poet laureate? If not, you can save this newsletter and watch it later. Or watch a little bit at a time. You'll have to get past the constant lip smacking. If you can't watch the video in its current format then click here to watch.

Updated World Class Poetry Pages

I managed to update an entire section of WCP this week. The poetry terms section now has a new look. Enjoy the A-Z.

And, of course, I've also updated the poetry book reviews page to reflect the latest published book review.

New World Class Poetry Pages

I finished reading Eric David Lough's Lassoed With A Decorative Tongue. Here's the first paragraph, then a jump:

Eric David Lough in Lassoed With A Decorative Tongue seeks to bring Baudelaire into the 21st century using symbolism and free verse word swirls of titillating sweets. He often succeeds, but nearly as often his images fall like flies zapped with bug spray.

Read the rest

American Life in Poetry: Column 175

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

A part of being a parent, it seems, is spending too much time fearing the worst. Here Berwyn Moore, a Pennsylvania poet, expresses that fear--irrational, but exquisitely painful all the same.

Driving to Camp Lend-A-Hand 
			for Emma Grace

The day we picked our daughter up from camp, 
goldenrod lined the road, towheaded scouts 
bowing on both sides, the parting of macadam 
as we drove, the fields dry, the sky lacy with clouds. 
A farmer waved.  A horse shrugged its haughty head. 
We stopped for corn, just picked, and plums and kale, 
sampled pies, still warm, and tarts and honeyed bread. 
Sheets on a line ballooned out like a ship's sail. 
Time stopped in those miles before we saw her. 
For eight days we hadn't tucked her in or brushed 
her hair or watched her grow, the week a busy blur 
of grown-up bliss.  It came anyway, that uprush 
of fear--because somewhere a child was dead: 
at a market, a subway, a school, in a lunatic's bed.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Berwyn Moore, whose most recent book of poetry is "Dissolution of Ghosts," Cherry Grove Collections, 2005. Poem reprinted from "Nimrod International Journal of Poetry and Prose," Vol. 49, no. 2, by permission of Berwyn Moore. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.