The poet Ted Kooser turned 85 this year, and the Pulitzer Prize winner and former poet laureate of the United States is as productive as ever, with Copper Canyon Press putting out his latest volume, Raft, earlier this fall. Since the 2018 publication of the new and selected volume Kindest Regards, Kooser has written two books of poetry and two chapbooks and written or cowritten two picture books, and he continues to edit the Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry series at the University of Nebraska Press. And in December, the University of Nebraska Press will republish Kooser’s 1980 anthology The Windflower Home Almanac of Poetry, featuring poets from the Great Plains and designed to resemble a farmers’ almanac.
PW spoke with Kooser about his new book, his writing process for both poetry and picture books, and how he keeps so busy well into his 80s. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
The first two poems in your new book, “Raft” and “A Man with a Rake,” set the tone for the collection—you write, for instance, “he’s figured out now how to slow it / all down”—and the final poem, “Bird,” concludes it in kind. Did you think of these poems as elegies as you were writing them?
Those first two poems are those of the old man I’ve become, 85 now. The tone of “Raft” is largely elegiac, as we old fellows like to look back with fondness at times and people long gone. If I’m not writing about my own life today, I’m writing about the lives of other people, like the man with the rake or the man in “Under a 40 Watt Bulb.” And that moment in that little country cemetery, in “Bird,” was a wonderful, touching experience—those two women, my mother and her childhood friend, Bird, seeing each other for the first time in probably 70 years.
I seem to be quite an elegiac old guy. Almost all of my poems have some elegy in them.
Well into your 80s, you remain as busy as ever. How do you manage to be so productive?
I write every morning, from about 4:30 to 7:00 or 8:00 a.m., and I can get quite a lot done in that time. During the rest of the day I take care of errands, but also spend a lot of time in correspondence with other writers.
You also edit work by other writers quite a bit. What do you enjoy about working with other poets? Has editing changed how you work or think about your own poetry?
Editing—especially my two literary journals, the Salt Creek Reader and the Blue Hotel—connected me with many other writers, which brought me into a community that might not have been available otherwise. I see the work of editing as apart from my work as a poet. Editing is something that I can do during the day, whereas my own writing has to be done very early in the morning—before the critic inside me wakes up, to steal from Kate DiCamillo.
If I come upon someone’s poem that I really like, I want to make copies and share it with everyone who comes to mind. And my writer friends are doing the same. I suppose it’s about being a part of a community of writers who are kind and helpful to each other.
You've written several picture books (and have even been the subject of one: Ted Kooser: More Than a Local Wonder, by Carla Ketner and illustrated by Paula Wallace). How did the latest, Marshmallow Clouds, cowritten with Connie Wanek and illustrated by Richard Jones, come about? How do you find writing a picture book different from writing a poem?
I was honored that Carla and Paula wanted to do that book and were successful in finding a publisher. I love illustrated children’s books, and have quite a big collection of them. So it was especially fun to have an illustrated book about me.
Connie and I have become close friends over the years and exchange letters and emails a couple of times a week. She is a superb letter writer, and I cherish each one. I suggested we might try a children's book together and to try it on Candlewick, which had published my earlier children's books.
While I'm writing, I never know which way something will go. I just follow the thread to see what will happen. Maybe a poem I thought to be "adult" seems, after a while, to look like something a child might like.
