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#AmReading Ted Kooser: poems, nonfiction, craft

The Poetry Home Repair Manual (2005)

stack of Ted Kooser books: The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Official Entry Blank, and The Wheeling YearPoems that change our perception are everywhere you look, and one of the definitions of poetry might be that a poem freshens the world.

. . . .

But how do you come up with ideas?

You sit with your notebook, and after a while something begins to interest you. The poet William Stafford described it as being like fishing: you throw out your line and wait for a little tug. Maybe all you get is a minnow, three or four words that seem to have a little magic, but even that can be enough to get the writing started. And a minnow can be pretty good bait for bigger fish.

Official Entry Blank (1969)*

From “Man Opening a Book of Poems”

Turning a page as if it were a rock, / he bends and peers beneath it cautiously, / Waving its wet antennae to the light, / a poem in its narrow, ambling track /  stops dead and lifts its mossy mouth to him.

(* This one’s out of print, so check your library.)

The Wheeling Year (2014)

From “January”

Part of my morning ritual is to put on my shoes without sitting down, and by this demonstrating to myself that I am not so old as to topple over into a steaming heap when trying to balance on one leg.

What are you reading these days?

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Through stories we transcend.

“It’s very important to transcend the places that hold us.”
~ Rubin Carter in “The Hurricane”

The air is weighted with disappointment, fear, anger. You walk around in a daze, watch ridiculous shows on TV, flare up in anger at the slightest setback. You could stay in that corner, grow silent, be polite. (But you have been polite long enough.) What holds you back from speaking your mind? What stops you from telling your story? It’s one thing, it’s a million. It’s the pounding of your heart in the face of a stranger, your arms frozen at your side. It’s the pull at the back of your head and the voice inside that says, whatever you write down will not be enough. It’s the fear of being vulnerable. Will they listen? Does it matter?

Yes. You are not alone. Our stories connect us. Those connections carry us forward. Speak up, in person or on the page. How else will we transcend?

transcend: girl jumping into water

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Story in Photos: How You View Your World

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about details, perspective, and the filters through which we view our world. The way these three concepts work together are never more apparent than when I study photos, mine or someone else’s.

photo of hand holding tiny portrait photo from the early 1900sI found this tiny portrait in an old empty bank building somewhere in Waxahachie, TX. I was twelve. My mother and I were extras in Places in the Heart (a story in itself).

One particular night, they were filming a carnival scene right outside the bank. It was cold out, I’d been stuck up at the top of a Ferris wheel with another “extra” friend for what seemed like hours. We were in between shoots, and somebody mentioned hot chocolate being served inside the bank. So my friend and I hid out in the building long enough to warm up, drink too much, and discover the tiny photo wedged between two strips of floorboard. I’m sure I was supposed to leave the photo there, not touch anything but the cocoa. But I picked it up anyway and slipped it into my overalls pocket, took it home and tucked it away.

I love this photo for its size, for the look of the woman in it–her expression, her posture, the way the ribbon at her collar falls flat. In this image, I can imagine her view of the world and even her emotion: bored, a little tired, maybe a hint of nervousness disguised as indifference toward the photographer.

Fast forward plenty of years when I uncovered more tiny portraits, this time digital pictures and I knew the photographer: my daughter at four years old who snuck off with my camera and captured her view from 36 inches. The photos she snapped showed the silly moments I missed in my everyday busy-ness and revealed a vision of truth.

The baby.

photos: Special Baby with her friends

The blur.

photos: woman in motion

The brother.

young boy peeks in from behind a door

And me.

image of woman working at laptop surrounded by coffee, checkbook, journal

Each photo as a whole reveals so much about her at that age, but also about those around her, and it’s in the details where she captures that time and space: Special Baby in the spotlight; Mom in motion (that’s me in that blurry shot); her mischievous brother; and me again–this time at my laptop, clickety-clacking away, writing a blog post, journal close by, checkbook just beyond my fingertips, coffee.  (By the way, very little has changed in the last seven years, except that Special Baby has been carefully tucked away and I’m drinking decaf these days.)

My daughter’s photo collage and the portrait of the unknown woman perfectly illustrate the act of storytelling. In a snapshot, we share our framed view of the world and invite others to see life through our lens–a different, often new point of view (literally and figuratively). The story we capture, though, isn’t revealed only in the object at the center, but in the details that fill the frame, in the timestamp of when it was taken (or when it was found), and in the perspective from which we shoot–in focus or not.

I bet you have a favorite photo or two. How does that image reveal your world or the world of the person who took it?

Better yet, how does your writing reveal your world? Because really, when we incorporate the same kind of study in our stories and essays, our words–and our worlds–become that much stronger.

Don’t forget, Principles & Prompts is open for registration.
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and plenty of writing prompts.