Find solace and connection in a world that feels increasingly divided with this collection of poems celebrating kindness, compassion, and shared humanity.Healing the Divide offers a powerful antidote to the negativity of modern life, inviting readers to embrace ordinary moments of grace and connection. Through the intimate focus of poetry, this anthology uncovers the beauty and vulnerability in everyday interactions, reminding us of our shared humanity. Ex...

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry“Kooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance.”—Poetry"[Kooser] brushes poems over ordinary objects, revealing metaphysical themes that 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." —The Philadelphia Inquirer"Del...

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.Raftis 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 lov...

“Kooser . . . must be the most accessible and enjoyable major poet in America. His lines are so clear and simple.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post“Nothing escapes him; everything is illuminated.” —Library Journal“Will one day rank alongside of Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams.” —Minneapolis Tribune“Kooser’s ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift.” —The Bloomsbury ...

Ted Kooser lives and writes on 62 acres of wooded hills and pasture in rural Nebraska with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, a retired editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. None of their property is farmed and is instead left to an abundance of wildlife. For many years Kooser worked at a desk in the life insurance business, retired at 60, and for fifteen years taught poetry writing in the graduate program of the University of Nebraska.He is the author of fifteen books of poetry, five volu...

For Valentine’s Day 1986, Ted Kooser wrote “Pocket Poem” and sent the tender, thoughtful composition to fifty women friends, starting an annual tradition that would persist for the next twenty-one years. Printed on postcards, the poems were mailed to a list of recipients that eventually grew to more than 2,500 women all over the United States. Valentines collects Kooser’s twenty-two years of Valentine’s Day poems, complemented with illustrations by Robert Hanna and a new poem appearing for...

The publication of Ted Kooser's Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems is a literary event of major importance. Long admired and praised by other poets, Kooser is also accessible to the reader not familiar with contemporary poetry.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Ted Kooser and award-winning illustrator, Jon Klassen, comes a poignant tale of loss, change, and nature's quiet triumph.When the house was new, not a single tree remained on its perfect lawn to give shade from the sun. The children in the house trailed the scent of wild trees to neighboring lots, where thick bushes offered up secret places to play. When the children grew up and moved away, their father, alone in the house, continued his battle agai...

Red Stilts finds Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser at the top of his imaginative and storytelling powers. Here are the richly metaphorical, imagistically masterful, clear and accessible poems for which he has become widely known. Kooser writes for an audience of everyday readers and believes poets “need to write poetry that doesn’t make people feel stupid.” Each poem in Red Stilts strives to reveal the complex beauties of the ordinary, of the world that’s righ...

Like the yellow, pink, and blue irises that had been transplanted from house to house over the years, the stories of poet Ted Kooser’s family had been handed down until, as his mother lay ill and dying, he felt an urgency to write them down. With a poet’s eye for detail, Kooser captures the beauty of the landscape and the vibrancy of his mother’s Iowa family, the Mosers, in precise, evocative language.The center of the family’s love is Kooser’s uncle, Elvy, a victim of cerebral pal...

"Kooser’s picturesque poetry vividly shapes his living sky metaphors. . . A lofty concept and radiant illustrations will leave readers on cloud nine." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)The skies are hanging their freshly washed—and sweepingly illustrated—clouds out to dry in Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Ted Kooser’s celestial ode to an approaching rainstorm.One sky unpins damp sheets of cirrus. Another wads cirrocumulus into a basket ...

Celebrated poets Ted Kooser along with Connie Wanek, and illustrator Richard Jones, explore figures of speech in a spirited and magical way—and invite our imaginations out to play.A freewheeling romp through the world of imagery and metaphor, this quietly startling collection of thirty poems, framed by the four elements, is about art and reality, fact and fancy. Look around: what do you see? A clown balancing a pie in a tree, or an empty nest perched on a leafless ...