Delights & Shadows

Ted Kooser

The first thing you should know about Delights & Shadows is that it won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Of course, if you're reading this on Amazon, you probably already do. Whenever you hear about a book winning a major prize, your brain should immediately switch into question mode. Does the book deserve the prize?

You haven't read every book of poetry released in 2004. I certainly haven't. So neither of us is likely qualified to answer that question. I can say, however, that Ted Kooser's book is a lot better than some that have previously been awarded the Pulitzer.

Kooser writes about simple things, accessible things, and this alone should be putting him in the spotlight; reading a couple of Ted Kooser poems in high school now and then might be one of the cure for the American educational system's present ability to turn almost every student that goes through its meatgrinder off poetry for the rest of their lives. When the main complaint of students is that the stuff they're forced to read is well nigh unintelligible (and given some of the stuff in the canon, they've probably got a point), it might do a world of good to hand students something like this:

"A farmhouse window back far from the highway speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice. Against this stillness, only a kettle's whisper, and against the starry cold, one small blue ring of flame." (--"A Winter Morning")

That's about as symbolic as the poems in this collection get. It's stuff that the average high school student can easily figure out (well, as long as they've encountered a gas stove in their lives).

The only real downside to the collection is that Kooser ends his poems at times with lines that ache to have "the moral of the story is..." right before them.

"...Years later, wherever we've gone, whatever we've come to, our ignorance spoils the creamed corn." (--"Creamed Corn")

The word "ignorance" is one I hope to never see in a poem again.

Still, most of the time, Kooser gets it right, and most of the poems in this collection are gems. This is a fine piece of work, and one that deserves the (relatively) widespread recognition receiving the Pulitzer will bring it. Check it out.