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• American Life in Poetry: Column 289 | 10.05.10

  1804 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 There’s only so much we can do to better ourselves, and once we’ve done what we can, it still may not have been enough. Here’s a poem by Michelle Y. Burke, who lives in N.Y., in which a man who does everything right doesn’t quite do everything right. Nocturne A man

• American Life in Poetry: Column 314 | 03.30.11

  2151 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Maybe you have to be a poet to get away with sniffing the paws of a dog, and I have sniffed the paws of all of mine, which almost always smell like hayfields in sunlight. Here Jane Varley, who lives in Ohio, offers us a touching last moment with

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  American Life in Poetry: Column 283 | 08.24.10

  2244 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 I’ve read dozens of poems written about the events of September 11, 2001, but this one by Tony Gloeggler of New York City is the only one I’ve seen that addresses the good fortune of a survivor. Five Years Later My brother was on his way to a dental appointment when the second

• American Life in Poetry: Column 319 | 05.03.11

  7204 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Here’s a poem in which eight-year-old Ava Schicke, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, tells us just who she is and what she thinks. I am I am a daughter and a sister. I wonder when I will die. I hear the warm weather coming. I see stars in the day. I want to learn my

• American Life in Poetry: Column 305 | 01.25.11

  3701 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 The great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso said that, in his subjects, he kept the joy of discovery, the pleasure of the unexpected. In this poem celebrating Picasso, Tim Nolan, an attorney in Minneapolis, says the world will disclose such pleasures to us, too, if only we pay close attention. Picasso How

• American Life in Poetry: Column 297 | 11.30.10

  3582 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 To be stumped by the very last crossword puzzle you ever will work on, well, that’s defeat, but a small and amusing defeat. Here George Bilgere, a poet from Ohio, gives us a picture of his mother’s last day on earth. Blank When I came to my mother’s house the day after

• American Life in Poetry: Column 317 | 04.19.11

  5775 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Our wars come home, sooner or later. Judith Harris lives in Washington, D.C., and in this poem gives us a veteran of Iraq back among the ordinary activities of American life. End of Market Day At five, the market is closing. Burdock roots, parsley, and rutabagas are poured back into the trucks. The antique

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  American Life in Poetry: Column 304 | 01.18.11

  2837 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 After my mother died, one of the most difficult tasks for my sister and me was to take the clothes she’d made for herself to a thrift shop. In this poem, Frannie Lindsay, a Massachusetts poet, remembers a similar experience. The Thrift Shop Dresses I slid the white louvers shut so

• American Life in Poetry: Column 312 | 03.15.11

  2790 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Ellery Akers is a California poet who here brings all of us under a banner with one simple word on it. The Word That Is a Prayer One thing you know when you say it: all over the earth people are saying it with you; a child blurting it out as the seizures

• American Life in Poetry: Column 315 | 04.08.11

  5935 readersby Ted Kooser, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 We who teach creative writing have been known to tell our students that there is no subject so common and ordinary that it can’t be addressed in a poem, and this one, by Michael McFee, who lives in North Carolina, is a good example of that. Spitwads Little paper cuds we