Delights and Shadows
by Ted Kooser
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of Delights and Shadows.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 205)
Read in August, 2007
This volume of Kooser’s poems won the Pulitzer Prize a couple of years ago and it is an enjoyable, accessible work of reflection on age (and therefore time and meaning). I read the first four or five poems to my girlfriend as we sat in a Rockport seafood luncheon place, fried shrimp baskets and canned beverages on red and white plastic table cloths. And the poems worked. “…At what must seem to be / a great distance, a nurse holds the door, / smiling and calling encouragement. / How patient...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in April, 2008
Ted Kooser received the Pulitzer Prize for this collection of poetry in 2004 and served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2004-2006. But do I like the poetry? Yes. Why? Hmmmm... well, his subjects are ordinary things (like Dishwater, or Pegboard) and ordinary events (like cutting the grass or buying a hat) but, of course, the ordinary things and events reveal a more extraordinary life in the hands of a poet. There is more character development in a short poem about Applesauce than there...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2008
Guy Rotella has(surprisingly)noted that certain elements of my poems recall similar elements in Kooser's late poems. Needless to say, I was somewhat stoked to hear this. Certainly Kooser's elevation of the mundane to the sacral appeals to my aesthetic goal, but I always thought my "work" was more akin to the lunatic ravings of early modernism (Hardy, Edward Thomas, and the like). Hmm...
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Kooser is just a really, really amazing poet. He just keeps delivering, almost like the kid who is so good at everything in school you end up hating him. Fortunately Kooser makes beautiful art, frequently out of the ordinary, which forgives the seemingly easy way he shows us all up. I know its not easy, he just makes it look that way.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in February, 2007
An excellent collection of Kooser's short poems. They're dusty, midwestern, and very satisfying. It's like digging through the boxes in your grandparents' basement. It's hard not to read the whole thing in a sitting. Kooser's got a dark streak, but it doesn't really show in this collection like it does in his others.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2008
This was my first time reading Kooser's poetry, and I really liked it. His poems often describe an everyday object or a person doing something really ordinary. My favorite poems described a series of paintings and I really loved that - art building off art.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
It's Ted Kooser. I almost feel like that's good enough. I think the man's work is amazing and this was no exception. Fine poetry, finely tuned and well presented; I'll keep dropping back for favorites like "Old Lilacs" or "On the Road".
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
insomniacs
Really, they made this guy Poet Laureate? One of the great failings of the Bush administration. I broke my rule to never read poetry touted as revealing "the remarkable within an otherwise ordinary world" Never again!
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
yuck. just yuck. it's quite unique though to feel both bored and creeped-out at the precise same time. the best summary though for this feeling actually comes from one of Ted's own poem titles: "At the Cancer Ward"
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
Shana Wagger
Like Kooser's creative non-fiction book, " Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps," this is an accessible and plainspoken work. Kooser shares simple and poignant vingettes that are easy to relate to.
Like this review?
yes
1 comments
Read in April, 2008
I enjoyed Kooser's knack for writing both persona poems and nature poems, but I had great difficulty concentrating on his words at times. I'm not sure if this is my failure or his, but I'm leaning toward myself.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2008
I read this at Alton's tires, while four middle-aged women watched Oprah and talked about The Secret. No joke. Kooser stood up to all that and a humming Coke machine.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2007
Modern Poetry
Modern poetry
is
simply regular sentences with
creative
line
breaks.
I find it
dull
and pretentious
and utterly
forgettable.
Modern poetry
is
simply regular sentences with
creative
line
breaks.
I find it
dull
and pretentious
and utterly
forgettable.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Every American should read this book. Every poet should read this book. Everyone who hates poetry should read this book. This is what poetry should be.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in April, 2007
Amazing poetry! I loved every one of them...and they're very accessible for less poetry saavy people as well, since he writes very simply yet eloquently
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Kooser reads so accessibly that it's easy to think he's "light" reading. A genuine look at humanity and a gentle, quiet life of observation.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2007
More Kooser, including "Pearl," now one of my favorite poems. Any comment on it may give parts away, which I very much wish to avoid.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2008
One of the best volumes of poems I have ever read. Kooser writes in an extremely accessible style -- Highly recommended.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
people just starting to read poetry
Accessible, accomplished contemporary poet. Makes the small, ordinary details of daily life and work dance.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
A pleasing diversion. Pick it up between books, or between chapters, and read a poem or two.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment