Copper Canyon Press has been racing to keep up with orders for Delights & Shadows ever since Ted Kooser's collection of poems was named the winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. According to Michael Wiegers, executive editor of the Port Townsend, Wash.—based publisher, demand for Delights "surpasses everything we've done."
After last week's sixth printing of 20,000 copies, the collection has 50,000 copies in print and has been hovering among the top 600 at Amazon. It briefly climbed to number 24 immediately after the Pulitzers were announced, andhas been the number one poetry book on Nielsen BookScan for the past two weeks. Previously, Copper Canyon's bestselling book was Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda's Book of Questions, which has sold 30,000 copies over 15 years and got a media boost from the 1994 release of the movie Il Postino.
The Pulitzer has also given a bump to Kooser's newest work, Flying at Night: Poems 1965—1985, which was released by the University of Pittsburgh Press in March. "We can hardly keep it in stock," said marketing director Lowell Britson. "We've sold 6,500 copies, and we have a new printing of 8,000 copies coming at the end of this month."
Along with a jump in book sales, former insurance executive Kooser has enjoyed increased attendance at his readings. Two weeks ago, 1,000 people attended his reading at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. Relatively unknown outside the poetry world until he became poet laureate, Kooser now has a booking agent. He's also been using his new visibility to give an assist to other poets. In a joint project with the Poetry Foundation, Kooser has been writing a weekly newspaper column, "American Life in Poetry," in which he introduces a poem by a contemporary American poet, which newspapers and Web sites can run for free.
Despite his newfound fame, Kooser's book sales still have a way to go to catch up with former poet laureate Billy Collins. Combined sales for all formats of Collins's Picnic, Lightning (Univ. of Pittsburgh), Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (Random House) and Nine Horses (Random House) are 400,000 copies.
