Friday. My flight\u2019s overbooked. And there\u2019s a ruckus at the gate. I\u2019m heading to Des Moines, Iowa, to meet Poet Laureate Ted Kooser at the Des Moines National Poetry Festival, but poetry is far from my mind. I\u2019m anxious.<\/p>\n
Why has travel become so stressful? Finally, we board. I settle in and go over my notes.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve admired Ted Kooser\u2019s work for ages. In school I copied his poem \u201cThe Red Wing Church\u201d onto a sheet of loose-leaf paper and tucked it into my backpack like a good-luck charm. It\u2019s about an old dilapidated church\u2014no steeple, no congregation\u2014transformed into:<\/p>\n
\u2026Homer Johnson\u2019s barn, but it\u2019s still a church, That sense of sacredness remains. It\u2019s all around, in fact. But lately I\u2019ve just been too busy to notice.<\/p>\n \u201cRosie from Guideposts<\/em>,\u201d Ted greets me the next day at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, his voice warm and assured. Now 66, Ted\u2019s appointment as poet laureate was recently renewed by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, and Ted won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.<\/p>\n Still, I discover that Ted Kooser is a regular guy. Who happens to be remarkable.<\/p>\n \u201cThey put me in \u2018The Presidential Suite,\u2019\u201d Ted says, tickled. \u201cIt\u2019s bigger than the house I grew up in!\u201d That was in Ames. Ted has lived in Nebraska for decades, but he was in Ames last night, reading at Iowa State, his alma mater.<\/p>\n He pours us each a glass of water and eases into an armchair. \u201cIn Ames I visited the church I attended as a boy and spent some time there,\u201d he says wistfully. <\/p>\n \u201cThere was an old man, Seaman Knapp, with a collection of bells. At Christmas he always did a bell-ringing in front of the church, running up and down this long table. It\u2019s so sweet in my memory, and he\u2019s been gone fifty years.\u201d<\/p>\n Ted pays close attention to people, places. But he knows it isn\u2019t always easy.<\/p>\n \u201cYou drive home from work, find yourself in the garage and can\u2019t remember a thing that\u2019s happened between when you left and when you arrived,\u201d Ted says. \u201cTo really participate in life we have to figure out ways of being aware of what\u2019s around us.\u201d<\/p>\n Sure<\/em>, I think. But how do you do that with a busy life, work, family? \u201cThe poet Linda Gregg has her students notice six things a day. Lots of days I don\u2019t notice six things. I\u2019m not<\/em> always successful,\u201d Ted admits. \u201cBut I like paying attention to ordinary things.\u201d<\/p>\n Six things<\/em>. I make a note. Maybe I\u2019ll try that.<\/p>\n Like the great American poet Wallace Stevens, Ted started out in insurance. His career lasted more than three decades. He rose daily at 4:30 A.M. to write before heading to work. Sometimes poetry and business intersected.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the late sixties Bankers Life Nebraska hired an artist to take photos throughout the building, things we passed every day. He gave a slide show and built a production out of the beauty of these ordinary things,\u201d Ted says.<\/p>\n \u201cPoems are like that. They say, \u2018Here\u2019s something you may not have looked at. I\u2019m going to show it to you in a way that will make you notice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I ask how poetry took hold in him. \u201cI had an ordinary family, lived in an ordinary town. I wanted to be different. Mysterious. The arts were a way to be different. So I painted and wrote poems.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon his \u201cordinary family\u201d and \u201cordinary town\u201d became the subjects of his poetry. Revealing their magic came with maturity.<\/p>\n It troubles Ted when people feel that poetry isn\u2019t for them, that it takes a special skill or degree to enjoy it. His mission is to bring new readers to poetry, to reach regular people in small towns\u2014people like him.<\/p>\n Poetry is a democratic pleasure. The reader brings as much to the page as the author. Nothing pleases Ted more than helping people understand that.<\/p>\n Recently he heard from a new reader. Poetry never interested her, but she\u2019d heard Ted\u2019s poems on public radio. They resonated with her experience of rural life.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s who I want to read poems. Oftentimes a man will come up at the end of a reading and say, \u2018I\u2019ve never been to a poetry reading before. My wife dragged me here. But I liked it. I think I\u2019ll read some poems.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ted frets if a line of his poetry is too difficult. Clarity and accessibility are his cornerstones. In his insurance days he\u2019d run poems by his secretary. \u201cI\u2019d say, \u2018Does this make sense to you?\u2019 and she\u2019d say, \u2018No.\u2019 I\u2019d go home and work on it until it did.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve talked for more than an hour when Ted excuses himself to get more water. \u201cDry mouth,\u201d he explains, a lasting effect of the treatment he underwent for oral cancer.<\/p>\n He returns and I ask about that. \u201cJune 1998 I went to the dentist. I had a sore spot on my tongue. The dentist referred me for a biopsy right away.\u201d<\/p>\n He was diagnosed with stage 4A cancer. \u201cMy surgeon, Dr. Bill, said a marvelous thing: \u2018Radiation is gonna be hard. But you are about to enter one of life\u2019s great affirmative experiences.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I lean closer. \u201cDid you believe him?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t in a position to speculate!\u201d<\/p>\n Following his treatment, Ted took walks to regain his strength. Each time he\u2019d bring something home to write about. \u201cHere was a way to take disorder and anxiety, compress them into something small and orderly and take assurance from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Ted was changing, and so were his poems. Now he says, \u201cThere\u2019s a real spirit of celebration. I tend to be quite easily moved. More so, having survived cancer.<\/p>\n “I saw people in waiting rooms who were almost beatific in their love of life, their desire to live. There was a tremendous amount of grace in those waiting rooms.\u201d One poem, \u201cAt the Cancer Clinic,\u201d records that situation, and ends:<\/p>\n
\nwith clumps of tiger lilies in the grass\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n
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