Ted Kooser Biography
Ted Kooser (Full names: Theodore J. “Ted” Kooser) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. Kooser was one of the first poet laureates selected from the Great Plains and is known for his conversational style of poetry.
Ted Kooser Education
Ted Kooser attended Ames Public Schools for elementary and middle school. When Kooser arrived at Ames High School, his interest diverted from the library and went to cars. He joined the Nightcrawlers Car Club and became secretary of the group in 1956.
His motivation for writing in high school was credited to one of his teachers, Mary McNally, who encouraged him to continue writing essays and poems that reflected his life. When he reached his teenage age he became a famous poet for three reasons: glory, immortality and to leave the bohemian lifestyle behind.
He then graduated from Ames High School with a class of 175 students and enrolled at Iowa State University, the alma mater of his uncles. He began writing short nonfiction stories for the Iowa State student literary magazine. He also joined the Iowa State Writer’s Round Table, which he credits for fine-tuning his writing skills; Iowa Senator Tom Harkin was also a part of the group.
In 1961, Kooser moved to Marshalltown, Iowa, to student teach English classes. The following year he graduated with a BS in English education from Iowa State University and moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to live with his parents.
He was offered a graduate readership opportunity at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and in 1963, he and his wife moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. After winning the Vreeland Award for poetry in 1964, he soon lost his graduate readership from the University for his poor GPA. In 1967, he received his MA from Nebraska.
Ted Kooser Age
Ted Kooser was born on April 25, 1939, in Ames, Iowa United States. He celebrates his birthday on April 25, every year. He is 80 years old as of 2019.
Ted Kooser Salary
The amount of salary that Ted earns has not yet been revealed. However, the information will be updated as soon as it is available.
Ted Kooser Net Worth
Ted Kooser is an American poet who has an estimated net worth of $8 million dollars as of 2019.
Ted Kooser History
Kooser is the author of twelve known works of poetry. He was also the former vice-president of Lincoln Bankers Life, an insurance company, and lives on land near the village of Garland, Nebraska. He wrote for an hour and a half before work every morning, and by the time he retired, Kooser had published seven books of poetry.
He owned a book publishing company, Windflower. He teaches as a Presidential Professor in the English department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Kooser has lived most of his life in the Midwest, preferring a more rural lifestyle, as he’s chosen to live on an acreage in Nebraska.
Ted Kooser Wife
Kooser is married to Kathleen Rutledge, former editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. Ted’s son, Jeff, has two kids, Ted’s grandchildren, are named Margaret and Penelope.
Ted Kooser Quick facts
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Ted Kooser Poet
On August 12, 2004, Ted Kooser was named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Librarian of Congress to serve a term from October 2004 through May 2005. In April 2005, Ted Kooser was appointed to serve a second term as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. During that same week, Kooser received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book “Delights and Shadows”(Copper Canyon Press, 2004).
Kooser’s most recent book, Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2018 by Copper Canyon Press and surveys his entire four-decade career. Kooser lives in Garland, Nebraska, and much of his work focuses on the Great Plains.
Like Wallace Stevens, Kooser spent much of his working years as an executive in the insurance industry, although Kooser sardonically noted in an interview with the Washington Post that Stevens had far more time to write at work than he ever did. He hosts the newspaper project “American Life in Poetry.” He is also editor of the Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry series published by the University of Nebraska Press.
Ted Kooser Midwest Poetry Renaissance
Ted Kooser was part of the Midwest Poetry Renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s. The Midwest Poetry Renaissance drew on elements of Rural America through a five-state swath of the Great Plains region. Poets of the midwest were respected among artists throughout the country due to being informed of larger societal forces, such as the distrust of a media-driven culture.
More small presses opened up in that time, and Midwestern poets began publishing more work. Warren Woessner regards the catalyst of the MPR to be the anthology Heartland in 1967. The movement began to develop after that point, along with the works of Ted and other poets such as Victor Contoski, Mak Vinz, David Steinglass, Gary Gildner, James Hazard, Greg Kuzma, Judith Minty, and Kathy Weigner (as well as many others) who exemplified the rural subject matter and conversational tone.
Most of the poets were in their twenties or early thirties and published their first books. Ted was in his late twenties and thirties during the decade the Midwest Poetry Renaissance occurred. He published his first book through the University of Nebraska Press at age 30, titled “Official Entry Blank.”
Ted’s first full-length book was already out of print by the early 1970s, at which time he became more of a small press poet like many other poets in the Midwest. Ted continued to receive publication of individual poems within anthologies and published several more books on small presses.
He also began to edit The New Salt Creek Reader, which had six anthologies by 1974. According to a Warren Woessner, a poet during the Midwest Poetry Renaissance, the movement ended in 1975 with the publication of Heartland II.
Ted Kooser Poetic Style
Ted Kooser is known for his conversational style of poetry that is accessible to a nonliterary public. Critic Dana Gioia, in his book Can Poetry Matter?, describes Kooser’s style as “drawn from common speech, with subject matter common to the Midwest.”
Kooser’s early and contemporary work involves both troubles for Midwesterners and observations from everyday life. Recurring themes include love, family, place, and time, but he does not consider himself a regional poet.
Ted Kooser Poetry Foundation
Ted Kooser strayed from poetry in his next book, with a collection of essays titled Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (2002). Once again, Kooser zeroes in on the place he calls home. Just outside of Garland, Nebraska, the community is facetiously referred to as the “Bohemian Alps.” The essays cover one year, or four seasons, in the author’s life.
Although Kooser reflects on his younger days, the essays focus largely on the details of his current life and surroundings. In a contribution to Writer, Kate Flaherty said, “Kooser’s meditations on life in southeastern Nebraska are as meticulous and exquisite as his many collections of poetry, and his quiet reticence and dry humor are refreshing in this age of spill-it-all memoirs.”
For Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (2003) Kooser again teamed up with Harrison to publish their correspondence consisting of entirely short poems written to each other while Kooser was recovering from cancer. Writing in Poetry, contributor Ray Olson noted that “wit and wisdom” are the mainstay of these correspondences.
Olson added, “Their conversation always repays eavesdropping.” Kooser’s next book, Delights, and Shadows (2004) went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In the Washington Post, poet and critic Ed Hirsch noted that “there is a sense of quiet amazement at the core of all Kooser’s work, but it especially seems to animate his new collection of poems.”
Describing the work as “a book of portraits and landscapes … small wonders and hard dualisms,” Hirsch compared Kooser’s art to other Great Plains’ poets who write “an unadorned, pragmatic, quintessentially American poetry of empty places, of farmland and low-slung cities,” crafting poems of “sturdy forthrightness with hidden depths.”
When Kooser was named America’s national poet laureate in 2004, the honor coincided with the publication of Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985 (2005), a collection of his previously published poetry. At the time, the self-effacing poet was by no means a household name.
Of Flying at Night, New York Times Book Review contributor Brad Leithauser wrote, “This is good, honest work,” and Library Journal reviewer Louis McKee wrote that “Kooser’s pure American voice and clear-eyed observation are a refreshing treat after the cynical, skeptical poetry from the … coasts.”
Kooser used his post as laureate to further the cause of poetry with a general reading audience. Partnering with the Poetry Foundation, he began the “American Life in Poetry” program, which offers a free weekly poem to newspapers across the United States. The aim of the program is to raise the visibility of poetry.
Kooser’s other publications, including The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (2005) and Writing Brave and Free (2006), offer help to aspiring poets and writers, both in the guise of practical writing tips and essays on poetry, poets, and craft.
Kooser’s next non-fiction book, Lights on a Ground of Darkness (2009) returned to the meditations on the place that marked Local Wonders, though the book focuses on Kooser’s family, especially his Uncle Elvy. David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times described the book as “written in prose as spare as a winter sunset,” adding that “it is an elegy, not just for Kooser’s forebears but for all of us.”
Kooser teaches poetry and nonfiction at the University of Nebraska and continues to write. “I waste very little time anymore,” he said an interview for the University of Nebraska English Department newsletter. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his many honors and awards include the Nebraska Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Commenting on his writing, Kooser also told Contemporary Authors: “I write for other people with the hope that I can help them to see the wonderful things within their everyday experiences. In short, I want to show people how interesting the ordinary world can be if you pay attention.”
Ted Kooser Quotes
- The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way – engaging, compelling, even beautiful.
- All night, this soft rain from the distant past. No wonder I sometimes Waken as a child.
- Sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.
- Keeping a journal is like taking good care of one’s heart.
- There’s nothing wrong with delighting in what you do. In fact, most of the fun you’ll have as a poet will come about during the process of writing.
- Turtle has just one plan at a time, and every cell buys into it.
- I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a lot of old men and women who talked as if they were paying Western Union by the word.
- If I don’t take the risk, I’ll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge.
- When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.
- This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness.
- I farm a little plot of things to say, with not much frontage on the busy road.
Ted Kooser Books
- Delights and Shadows 2004
- Local wonders 2002
- The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets 2005
- Winter Morning Walks Ted Kooser 2000
- Splitting an Order 2014
- Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry 2003
- Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems 2018
- Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of a Place and Time 2009
- Flying at night 2005
- Weather central 1994
- House Held Up by Trees 2012
- Bag in the Wind 2010
- Valentines 2008
- The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book 2014
- Writing brave and free 2006
- One World at a Time 1995
- Mr. Posey’s New Glasses 2019
- The Bell in the Bridge 2016
Frequently Asked Questions About Ted Kooser
Who is Kooser?
Ted is an American poet
How old is Ted?
He is 80 years old as of 2019.
How tall is Kooser?
He has not revealed his height
Is Ted married?
Kooser is married to Kathleen Rutledge, former editor of the Lincoln Journal Star.
How much is Kooser worth?
He has an estimated net worth of $8 million dollars as of 2019.
How much does Ted make?
The amount of salary that he makes has not yet been revealed. However, the information will be updated as soon as it is available.
Where does Kooser live?
He lives in Garland, Nebraska U.S.A
Is Ted dead or alive?
He is still alive and in good health.