Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems

by Ted Kooser

Named U.S. Poet Laureate for 2004-2006, Ted Kooser is one of America's masters of the short metaphorical poem. Dana Gioia has remarked that Kooser has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation. Long admired and praised by other poets, Kooser is also accesible to the reader not familiar with contemporary poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Adult

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Ted Kooser lives in rural Nebraska with his wife, Kathleen, and three dogs. He is one of America's most noted poets, having served two terms as U. S. Poet Laureate and, during the second term, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection, Delights & Shadows. He is a retired life insurance executive who now teaches part-time at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. The school board in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently opened Ted Kooser Elementary School, which Ted says is his greatest honor, among many awards and distinctions. He has published twelve collections of poetry and three nonfiction books. Two of the latter are books on writing, The Poetry Home Repair Manual and Writing Brave and Free, and a memoir, Lights on a Ground of Darkness (all from University of Nebraska Press. Bag in the Wind from Candlewick is his first children's book, with which he is delighted. "It's wonderful," Ted said, "to be writing for young people. I am reinventing myself at age 70."

Reviews

[John]

Wonderful poems by a wonderful poet. Ted Kooser is a former US Poet Laureate. These poems are from the 1970s when he was getting started and getting noticed. He is a midwestern poet of quiet, simplicity, truth, and observation. Some of his best and most well known poems are in this book, including “Selecting A Reader,” “Spring Plowing,” and “The Blind Always Come As Such A Surprise.” I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in poetry that surprises you and reaffirms humanity.

[Jeff Morgan]

Sure Signs is the first collection of poetry I’ve read by Ted Kooser (former poet laureate of the United States).

Kooser uses an economy of words. All of these poems are brief, sparse in detail. The majority of them are about rural life: farmhouses, barns, birds, neighbors, etc. There is some humor here and there (that reminded a bit of Billy Collins) but there’s also quite a lot about loneliness, growing old, and death.

I really enjoyed these poems as a whole. The first poem in the collection was the most memorable to me:

Selecting a Reader
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

[Dan]

Sure Signs by Ted Kooser

This collection of ninety poems by Ted Kooser is mostly comprised of short poems about life on the farm in middle America. It is not quite at the level of Winter Morning Walks or Delights and Shadows in terms of imagery but there are some excellent poems here which tend to be the darker ones.

1. In a Country Cemetery in Iowa
2. Fort Robinson
3. For a Friend - my favorite poem, about a fatal car crash.
4. After My Grandmother's Funeral
5. A Place in Kansas
6. Tom Ball's Barn

4 stars. Kooser's poetry is spare and efficient. At times the vocabulary is lacking relative to other major poets.

[Mary Soon Lee]

Last year I read -- and greatly liked -- Ted Kooser's book about the craft of writing poetry, "The Poetry Home Repair Manual." In its wake, I realized it was past time I read a full book of Ted Kooser's own poetry. And I loved it. Ted Kooser writes such good poems, poems poetic and humane, poems imaginative yet precise in detail, poems with striking phrases that serve the poem rather than diminishing it. Often, they even make me feel better about the world.

I note that I selected this particular Kooser collection because it contains his poem "So This Is Nebraska." A writing prompt in "The Daily Poet" (Kelli Russell Agadon + Martha Silano) had led me to write a sequence of poems triggered by that poem. It is, suffice it to say, a very fine poem.

I also have a special soft spot for "The Constellation Orion," featuring both astronomy and a father-son sweetness.

[J. Alfred]

As you're reading these poems and finding them understandable, enjoyable, and heartwarming, you're wondering if you're doing poetry right. Shouldn't it be obscure, opaque, disquieting? Have you drifted onto a newer version of Eugene Fields? HAS YOUR JUDGEMENT BEEN CLOUDED BY SENTIMENTALITY
And yet you keep reading and you're pretty sure that these poems are actually quite good. If there are no real masterpieces among them, you think, at least there are no clunkers. And your world is expanding and you're feeling more sympathy with the people around you and if that's not art, what's the point, right

that's what you're thinking anyway but you wouldn't want to say it in front of certain literature professors

[Jacob Daum]

Honest and evocative poems, great window into rural American lifestyle/outlook I hadn’t seen in this depth before. Very sensitive treatment of death, loss and passage of time among other things.

[Alarie]

I bought a factory-sealed copy of Sure Signs at Barnes and Noble, so I didn’t realize it was such an early book (1980). Kooser was already a gifted poet, but not as good as he would become. I almost cut this rating to four stars for that reason, but reminded myself to grade based on all poetry books, not just Kooser’s own.

This collection starts with one of Kooser’s best known poems, “Selecting a Reader,” and includes one of my favorites, “They Had Torn off My Face at the Office.” He worked at an insurance company. Kooser rarely writes sarcastically, but he’s good at that, too. He concludes that after he slit his wrists and his hands fell off,

“they allow me to type with the stumps.
It pleases them to have helped me,
and I gain in speed and confidence.”

This early collection shows that Kooser already possessed those talents that make him one of my favorite poets. He captures the everyday, the supposedly ordinary, and makes us look again with fresh eyes. He doesn’t waste words. Most of these poems fill less than half a page. However, some of these poems don’t say quite enough for me, but maybe that’s because I know what is coming from him later.

[Margie]

Although my favorite book of Ted's was an early chapbook called "Old Marriage and New", I'll take this as a fine substitute. Ted's poetry is very accessible, which makes it something I recommend to a lot of people. But it also speaks eloquently and movingly about Nebraska and Iowa. And having known Ted as a friend means that his poetry also evokes for me memories of our times together.

[Corey]

He's such a graceful, lovely poet. The illumination of the small moment.

[Matthew Huff]

Some hits, but overall quite underwhelming. I'd like to read his more recent work.

[J]

This was a bit of an experiment to me. I haven't read much poetry and tend not to get it, at least not the humorous or rhyming kind. But recently I read Kooser's musings/essays in Local Wonders and absolutely loved it. He was a national Poet Laureate and his prose writing was particularly poetic so I thought I'd give the poetry a try. Though there were a few standout poems within overall most missed for me. I'll still try maybe one or two more of his collections, but I may just stick to rhyming poems.

[Adam Schmehl]

I really enjoyed this introductory taste of unique poems from Kooser. I am not equipped to evaluate the poetry except to say that this selection evoked incredibly strong emotions of nostalgia, winter, aging, sadness, the Midwest USA, agriculture, and overall melancholy.

So many of these poems were over my head, but it brought me great joy to earmark the ones that I think I started to understand.

[Timothy Juhl]

A recent thrifting find and a volume I didn't have.

I'm an unabashed fan of Ted Kooser's poetry. As a fellow Iowan and fellow Midwesterner (he lives in Omaha still), his poetry paints the pictures of rural life, my life for the last 13 years. It's a life that I love and I love how he finds all the beauty and sadness and humor and quiet that fills the cornfields, and lingers on deserted streets, or cries from the broken window of abandoned farmhouses.

If you've never read poetry, if you think poetry is difficult to understand, you haven't read a Kooser poem. He will show you how it's done.

[Shawn Aebi]

Another strong collection by Kooser, emphasizing the shapes, sounds, and customs of the heartland. More than a few poems on the impact of death, but not with a heavy, emotional tone. Continues his laser focused observations of nature finding rich, helpful words to give readers the context of events which contour the life of the farmer, housewife, local.

[Linda]

Reading a little at a time, Ted Kooser helps me see the world in new ways, that poetry can show every day as a delight. In "How to Make Rhubarb Wine", the steps are there for making along with ones you must not forget, like "Then go home/and sit barefooted in the shade/behind the house with a can of beer." I loved every poem like I always do when reading Kooser's poems.

[James]

Ted Kooser, who served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004 - 2006, is a great American poet and perhaps the most accessible poet identifiable with the Mideast. His keenly observed poems find beauty everywhere and this is a fine collection to serve as an introduction to his work.

[Donna Mork]

Once again, Kooser amazes me with his poetic form. From leaky faucets to book clubs to death of a coworker, he takes the ordinary and spins it to make you stop and think and see it from a different angle. He is amazing. Definite must read.

[J & J]

3.5

[E.]

Some of the poems were enjoyable but overall I didn't resonate much with this collection.

[Meaghin Burke]

"We will always be leaving our loves like old stoves in abandoned apartments."

[Joe]

Great collection of some of my favorite Kooser poems…and some (relatively) newer ones.

[Kevin]

Although not my favorite Kooser collection of poems, it is a great read. He really gives the reader an idea of what it is like to live in the midwest.

[Jordan McKinley]

It’s difficult to rate a poetry collection. On the whole, Kooser’s selections are good. He use lots of enjambment, but he uses it well enough that it’s well done, rather than tiresome and overused.

[James Passaro]

Midwest reflections of cold winters and quiet lives

[AJ Nolan]

I've long loved Ted Kooser's poetry, but I think I somehow missed reading a full collection. So I've remedied that and read "Sure Signs." It is a beautiful collection, equal parts whimsical and sad, embracing life while looking at death and aging. His poems are short, little moments and observations. I read it while eating dinner at a diner, and so didn't take the time to transcribe favorite poems like I usually do, both because I didn't want to get ketchup on the book, and because I didn't want to pause on the reading. Instead I dog eared pages, to remind myself to go back to transcribe my favorites. By the end of the book, I'd dogeared over twenty of the ninety+ poems. I don't even know how to pick one or two to mention here. There are ones like "Late February," which I have loved for years, having first read heard it on the Writer's Almanac (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org...), maybe, or in a textbook for one of my Freshman literature classes. It is a poem about the first thaw of winter, with lovely, precise images of how all the forgotten things of autumn turn up, like "autumn's fallen/bicycles, small carnivals/of paint and chrome." The poem is full of these unexpected images and metaphors, as in when he compares "children,/stiffened by winter/and dressed, somehow,/like old men, mutter/and bend to the work/of building dams." (18) In this he shows at once both the strain of winter, and the whimsy and seriousness of children's play. And so we are both prepared, and not prepared for the final turn of the poem, in with:

the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.

He has so many beautiful testaments to rural life. Not overly romanticized, but rather true portraits, of abandoned farmhouses, the starkness of fields in winter, the folk remedies passed on for generations, lonely highways, the letters people write one another. There are so, so many I want to put here, but I will put one that is rather unlike the others, that I love because it so exactly describes my experience, but in a way I had never imagined:

Birthday

Somebody deep in my bones
is lacing his shoes with a hook.
It's an hour before dawn
in that nursing home.
There is nothing to do but get dressed
and sit in the darkness.
Up the hall, in the brightly lit skull,
the young pastor is writing his poem.

So that is Ted Kooser for you. I highly recommend this book, especially for those of you who love the midwest, rural life, or maybe think you don't like, or get, poetry. You'll get this. You'll like this. Ted Kooser worked his whole life in the Insurance company, working his way up to a Vice President, and the day to day workingmanness of that shines through in his work. The discipline of getting up to write at five in the morning before going in to work and support his family. The valuing of both the practical and the artistic. I think that maybe it is that straddling of worlds, or rather the bringing together of worlds, is part of what makes Kooser's poetry so great. And I, for one, am glad he kept on writing.

[Abby]

I am very glad I bought this book. I am very glad I read it on lazy summer afternoons in a plains town in Wyoming. Sad and seasonal, these poems are not exactly weighty but definitely fill you up. Eving reading one or two a night as I did, I felt like I just had a full meal. There is very little motion here, and many old people and old friends and old houses and even death. There is also the kind of comfort you can only get from images of beauty in a place you've been in long enough to know it's not always beautiful.

[Benjamin]

Once again, I found myself warmed into the simplicity of human life as written by Ted Kooser. I could read poem after poem, immerse myself in story after story, and then pause after each one to be present in the scenes I've just entered - reminiscent scenes of my own childhood in rural Idaho.

I read Kooser because I want to absorb his language, his simple cadences and simple attentiveness to the basic fabric of life around us. I want to notice things like Kooser; I want to be able to speak and write with a simplicity, awareness, and cadence like his.

[Matt]

There are no poems in this slim volume that occupy more than one page. Most are a half-page or less in length. And yet they are compressed like diamonds, small things packed with significance. The poems cover a myriad of things, some humorous, some wistful, some sad, some bright, at least two that are terrifying. This is a remarkable collection that I will return to again and again. It has about it the qualities of a touchstone.

[Joseph Gascho]

One of my favorite poets, and a Nebraskan on top of it. I read it before we left for our trip to Nebraska. From the poem "Book Club":
Meanwhile, my father
is picking up leaves from the drive;
as he bends, his blood tries the loose doors
of his arteries. At sixty-six,
with his retirement Bulova
wound tight as his heart, he has entered
the blue, high-altitude hallway of age.
There air is thin. If he looks forward
or back he gets dizzy...

[Melody]

The Poet Laureate is not the Poet Laureate by accident. Kooser is a poet of the everyday and finds the transcendent therein. He puts me in mind of Robert Frost in the way he sneaks up on you and leaves you breathless and bewildered, thinking to yourself "... but that poem was about a woman and her dustrag, why am I so dizzy?"