Kooser’s Column 166

Posted by Linda Sue Grimes Jul 31, 2008

Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry

While serving as the U. S. Poet Laureate 2004 to 2006, Nebraska poet Ted Kooser launched his series of weekly columns called American Life in Poetry. These columns are offered free to newspapers to dramatize the value and just plain fun of poetry and to demonstrate how poetry enhances life in America.

Kooser’s Commentary

Kooser comments and introduces the poem: “Texas poet R. S. Gwynn is a master of the light touch. Here he picks up on Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet "Pied Beauty," which many of you will remember from school, and offers us a picnic instead of a sermon. I hope you enjoy the feast!”

The Poem

Hopkins' "Pied Beauty" is not a traditional sonnet, but a special sonnet form that Hopkins invented and named the "curtal sonnet." It is a shortened version the original Italian sonnet.

Before reading Gwynn’s take-off of Father Hopkins’ poem, please read the original, “Pied Beauty.”

The first four lines from Gwynn’s “Fried Beauty”:

Glory be to God for breaded things—

Catfish, steak finger, pork chop, chicken thigh,

Sliced green tomatoes, pots full to the brim

With french fries, fritters, life-float onion rings

For the rest of this verse, see Column 166 at American Life in Poetry.