Ted Kooser Quotes & Sayings

The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way - engaging, compelling, even beautiful. — Ted Kooser

She'd had little patience with darkness, and her heart
held only a measure of shadow. I touched
the warm dust of those colors, her tools,
and left there with light on the tips of my fingers. — Ted Kooser

When she left me
I stood out in the thunderstorm,
hoping to be destroyed by lightning.
It missed, first left, then right. — Ted Kooser

Valentine's Day is the poet's holiday. — Ted Kooser

A poem is a record of a discovery. — Ted Kooser

Just as a dancer, turning and turning, may fill the dusty light with the soft swirl of her flying skirts, our weeping willow
now old and broken , creaking in the breeze
turns slowly, slowly in the winter sun, sweeping the rusty roof of the barn with the pale blue lacework of her shadow. — Ted Kooser

Mike Forsberg's images give us bright openings onto a world ... Here on the Great Plains both people and trees and everything else are in some way shaped by wind and weather. This book, too, has been shaped by where it comes from, and that's just a part of its beauty. — Ted Kooser

Sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can't read the address. — Ted Kooser

It is all around us, free, this wonderful life: clear jingle of tire chains, the laughter of ice that breaks under our boots. Each hour's a gift to those who take it up. — Ted Kooser

At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell. — Ted Kooser

Don't talk to me about the stars, about how cold and indifferent they are, about the unimaginable distances. There are millions of stars within us that are just as far, and people like me sometimes burn up a whole life trying to reach them. — Ted Kooser

I farm a little plot of things to say, with not much frontage on the busy road. — Ted Kooser

There are mornings when everything brims with promise, even my empty cup. — Ted Kooser

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. — Ted Kooser

Keeping a journal is like taking good care of one's heart. — Ted Kooser

His hands fluttered like birds,
each with a fancy silk ribbon
to weave into their nest,
as he stood at the mirror
dressing for work, waving hello
to himself with both hands. — Ted Kooser

Pocket Poem
If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I'd opened it a thousand times
to see if what I'd written here was right,
it's all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me. — Ted Kooser

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. — Ted Kooser

All night, this soft rain from The distant past. No wonder I sometimes Waken as a child. — Ted Kooser

Wisdom is easy to carry but difficult to load. — Ted Kooser

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 ... — Ted Kooser

a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields. — Ted Kooser

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his. — Ted Kooser

If I don't take the risk, I'll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge. — Ted Kooser

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there's a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you're writing your poem, there's one less scoundrel in the world. And I'd like a world, wouldn't you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I'm certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don't think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say 'We loved the earth but could not stay. — Ted Kooser

A happy birthday 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 could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride the day down into night, to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand — Ted Kooser

I like the poem on the page and not at the podium. I like to address the poem in peace and quiet, not on the edge of a folding chair with a full bladder. I can't stand hearing a poem that I can't see. I did a reading at Wayne State, and it ended with the comedy such occasions deserve. I'd seated myself on a piano bench, and discovered upon attempting to arise at the end that the varnish had softened and I was stuck fast. The hinge was to the front, under my knees, so that as I tried to get up, I merely opened the lid. — Ted Kooser

Turtle has just one plan at a time, and every cell buys into it. — Ted Kooser