"Ted Kooser, the National Poet Laureate"

So what if we don’t have the best college football team in the nation! And, what’s the big deal about running all over the place wearing red shirts and red hats shouting “Go Big Red!” We Nebraskans have something no other state has! We can be just as proud of our poet as we ever were about our football team!
Yes, that’s right. On August 12, our very own Ted Kooser was named the National Poet Laureate by Librarian of Congress, James Billington. So, eat your hearts out you “Big Ten” conference whatyoumacallits. Nebraska’s got the Poet Laureate!

But, just knowing that we are the state with the Poet Laureate isn’t enough. We’ve got a state—if not national-- duty to become acquainted with his poetry so that whenever someone from Colorado or Texas or wherever starts boasting about his state’s superior team, we can interject by saying, “Oh, have your read Ted Kooser’s poem, “Questions about Angels“? You know, he’s the National Poet Laureate and he’s a Nebraskan!

To prepare yourself for this new adoration of a local boy gone big time, the Library has a number of poetry books by Kooser. “The Blizzard Voices”, written in 1986, tells the story in poetry of Nebraskans living though or dying in the Blizzard of 1888. In “Weather Central” he writes with eloquence of barn owls, potatoes, spider eggs, sparklers, baseball and the prairie in a way that makes them matter to the reader. In reading his poems, we learn that our own lives are themselves poems that are being created each day.

“Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps” one of Kooser’s later books—this one’s written in prose, not poetry---describes in exquisite detail, and with generous dollops of humor, the place he calls home---the Bohemian Alps of southeastern Nebraska. Kooser regales the reader with his memories of his grandmother's cooking, the closing of the local school, the old-fashioned outhouse behind the house, and more. He also gives the reader his current thoughts about the county weed control policy and new housing development that is destroying his view of the Bohemian Alps of Nebraska.

In “Delights and Shadows,” Kooser again uses poetry to draw inspiration from overlooked details of daily life. Objects like a pegboard, the taste of creamed corn and a misplaced and forgotten salesman's trophy help reveal the remarkable, in what before was a merely ordinary, world. In this book, as in all—both prose and poetry—Kooser writes about the dignities reflected and the indignities suffered, the unexplainable habits, and the small and great sorrows of our daily lives. His writings are a witness to our hunger for connectedness and our struggle to find balance.

So, come to the Library and check out a book or two by Ted Kooser and find out why we can be so doggone proud of our own National Poet Laureate!

Recent memorial donations received by the Columbus Library Foundation include a memorial in honor of Valetta Kluever from Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Johnson and a donation from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Trautwein in memory of Clayton Schwartz. A donation was received from Dorothy Glaser for the purchase of framed art prints.