Kooser’s Column 171

Posted by Linda Sue Grimes Jul 27, 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

About the poem, the former poet laureate writes: “Sometimes I think that people are at their happiest when they're engaged in activities close to the work of the earliest humans: telling stories around a fire, taking care of children, hunting, making clothes. Here an Iowan, Ann Struthers, speaks of one of those original tasks, digging in the dirt.”

The Poem

A sampling, the first five lines:

Today I planted the sand cherry with red leaves—

and hope that I can go on digging in this yard,

pruning the grape vine, twisting the silver lace

on its trellis, the one that bloomed

just before the frost flowered over all the garden.

For the rest of the poem, American Life in Poetry: Column 171 .