Raft - by Ted Kooser (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Delightfully universal, Raft by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ted Kooser travels the Midwest landscape, attuned to life's shared experiences and emotions--illness, aging, beauty, and love.

Raft is our fourth collection of poetry from Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser. Open in his desire to write for the everyday reader, these poems maintain the open-handed and accessible style that thousands have come to love. Yet, deeply imagistic and metaphorically rich, Raft shows us that even the simplest of objects, the simplest of actions, can become a portal. A boy feeding a goldfish becomes a meditation on loneliness. Scraps of gauze open the door to a study on happiness. Both local and delightfully universal, Raft travels the Midwest landscape, attuned to the shared experiences and emotions of life--illness and aging, beauty and love. Some poems, nostalgia-wrapped, cradle elegies for lost family and friends. Adrift on life rafts of language, this book is a lesson in intentional observation, a celebration of the small, quiet wonders of life.

Review Quotes

Praise for Raft

"Affirms his genius for capturing simple folks, like a man raking his yard or a worker gathering grocery carts, with a
beauty that tells us every soul has dignity."--Danny Heitman, NOLA.com

"Kooser has always been concerned with isolating moments and places that would have been easily missed or forgotten had he not chosen to memorialize them. People, of course, have played a significant part in those poems, but Raft is particularly keen to remind us of the importance of our fellow humans who have been relegated to the margins."--David Starkey, California Review of Books

"For more than half a century . . . Kooser has been looking attentively at the world, translating his vision of it with a painter's eye, a composer's ear and a poet's intuition for metaphor, and offering short, clear, alluring poems so that his readers, too, can 'see the life at play in everything.'"--John Cusatis, Post & Courier

"Raft is a book of great variety. . . . If Kooser has doubts about the value of his work, thank goodness he's writing and publishing it anyway. Raft is an excellent book and a welcome extension of an essential oeuvre."--Robert M. West, Asheville Poetry Review

"Ted Kooser has that rare ability to maintain, from poem to poem, a voice that is immediately recognizable for its devotion to the truth of simple observation. Throughout his career, he has been steadfast in his commitment to discovery, against backdrops ranging from the quotidian to the otherworldly."--Judith Harris, Literary Matters

Praise for Ted Kooser

"Ted Kooser . . . has a genius for making the ordinary sacred." --New York Times

"Kooser's poetry is understated yet manages to skillfully illuminate the small moments of life."--Christian Science Monitor

"[Kooser] brushes poems over ordinary objects, revealing metaphysical themes the way an investigator dusts for fingerprints. His language is so controlled and convincing that one can't help but feel significant truths behind his lines."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"There is a sense of quiet amazement at the core of all Kooser's work."--Edward Hirsch, Washington Post

"Kooser is a master of the subjective description. Empathetic without sentimentality, his eye ranges over all sorts of everyday subjects and finds material everywhere wherever the unpredictable particularity of the world can be glimpsed."--Georgia Review

About the Author

Ted Kooser is one of America's best-selling poets. A retired insurance executive and Presidential Professor Emeritus at The University of Nebraska, he served as United States Poet Laureate and won the Pulitzer prize for Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press). As United States Poet Laureate, he launched and edited a weekly newspaper column, "American Life in Poetry," which has an estimated circulation of over four and a half million readers around the world. Along with poetry, Kooser has published several popular children's books, a memoir, and numerous collections of nonfiction. He lives near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife.