If you don’t listen to This American Life on 89.5, you should. And, beyond its great storytelling, I’ll give you another reason to listen:... »
American Life in Poetry
ALP: Like Coins, November
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 I love poems in which the central metaphors are fresh and original, and here’s a marvelous, coiny description of autumn by Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck, who lives in Illinois. Like Coins, November We drove past late fall fields as flat and cold as sheets of tin and, in the distance, trees were... »
ALP: Bach in the DC Subway
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how... »
ALP: First Grade
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 It’s been sixty-odd years since I was in the elementary grades, but I clearly remember those first school days in early autumn, when summer was suddenly over and we were all perched in our little desks facing into the future. Here Ron Koertge of California gives us a... »
ALP: Green-Striped Melons
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Jane Hirshfield, a Californian and one of my favorite poets, writes beautiful image-centered poems of clarity and concision, which sometimes conclude with a sudden and surprising deepening. Here’s just one example. Watermelons, by S n o R k e l American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry... »
ALP: Photo, Brownie Troop, St. Louis, 1949
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 There have been many poems written in which a photograph is described in detail, and this one by Margaret Kaufman, of the Bay Area in California, uses the snapshot to carry her further, into the details of memory. 80’s Collage Project, by Sakurako Kitsa American Life in Poetry is... »
ALP: Sustenance
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Elizabeth Bishop, one of our greatest American poets, once wrote a long poem in which the sudden appearance of a moose on a highway creates a community among a group of strangers on a bus. Here Ronald Wallace, a Wisconsin poet, gives us a sighting with similar results. ... »
ALP: “Cautionary Tales”
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 For over forty years, Mark Vinz, of Moorhead, Minnesota–poet, teacher, publisher–has been a prominent advocate for the literature of the Upper Great Plains. Here’s a recent poem that speaks to growing older. Cautionary Tales Beyond the field of grazing, gazing cows the great bull has a pasture to himself, monumental, black flanks... »
ALP: Society’s isolating technology
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Bill Holm, one of the most intelligent and engaging writers of our northern plains, died on February 25th. He will be greatly missed. »
ALP: Alice’s first strike
"The Big Lebowski" caught bowling on film, and this poem by Regan Huff of Georgia captures it in words. »
ALP: Patience is a good chair
My father was the manager of a store in which chairs were strategically placed for those dutiful souls waiting and waiting »