Ted Kooser writes prose
with the same care that he writes poetry. You may remember his Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, something of a meditation on place and memory and one's place in memory and the world. In The Poetry Home Repair Manual, he is writing carefully and thoughtfully and with characteristic humility about this business of making poems. Given Kooser's unassuming nature, now is a good time for his quiet wisdom to come into print, for he has the country's attention as our national Poet Laureate. (You wonder how that happened - quiet goodness trumping a much louder competition. We can only assume that cream rises and will keep on rising, and that Kooser won't be the one and only Poet Laureate ever to come out of the middlewest.)
So Kooser has the stage, and what he brings to it bears the mark of his quiet modesty throughout. The Poetry Home Repair Manual is subtitled Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. Yet this advice is not just for beginning poets: I could name a few established poets who might profit from Kooser's wisdom. Not that they'd listen, mind you, but they ought to.
Kooser wins my heart in the very first sentence of his introduction, "About This Book:"
Most of a poet's education is self-education, and most of what you'll learn you'll teach yourself through reading and writing poems.
When you tell people to read 100 poems for every poem they write, they look at you funny. Yet none of them want to have their toilet be the first installed by an apprentice plumber at his first day on the job. One learns by reading and by writing, reading and writing again and again. They call it practicing a craft for a reason - you have to practice it.
Kooser wins my heart again in the first sentence of the second paragraph of his introduction:
But the craft of careful writing and meticulous revision can be taught.
Especially the meticulous revision can be taught, and the need for it.
With my admittedly very limited teaching experience, I've come to the conclusion that the good teacher does two, or perhaps three things: he or she (1) holds up the standard of excellence so the student can see what is to be achieved; (2) ignites enthusiasm in the student, and rekindles it when it flags; and (3) perhaps may be able to reduce the number of mistakes the student needs to make in order to learn from one's mistakes. Of the three, igniting enthusiasm and keeping it kindled is probably the most important, as enthusiasm for the task is what the writer needs first, and all good things flow from the continued commitment and practice which enthusiasm imparts.
And The Poetry Home Repair Manual ignites enthusiasm, even for an old bear like me, even in the face of the fact that
You'll never be able to make a living writing poems. We'd better get this money business out of the way before we go any farther.
Certainly, if you're the kind of person who uses money to keep score, it's unlikely that you'll be drawn to poetry as a profession. Still, we sometimes resent our more well-heeled siblings. Yet money is not an accurate yardstick of success, not matter how much the world wants to convince us otherwise. Greatness is not about dollars, and it's a good bet that true greatness is uncomfortable in the presence of big money.
Kooser's manual is divided into twelve lessons, or chapters, starting with "A Poet's Job Description," ending with "Relax and Wait," and touching a range of other matters, in Kooser's quiet manner, along the way:
2. Writing for Others
3. First Impressions
4. Don't Worry about the Rules
5. Rhyming, Ham Cubes, Prose Poems
6. Writing about Feelings
7. Can You Read Your Poem through Your Poem
8. Writing from Memory
9. Working with Detail
10. Controlling Effects through Careful Choices
11. Fine-Tuning Metaphors and Similes
I come away from the book invigorated and refreshed; Kooser has rekindled my enthusiasm. He has, all through, held up his standards of excellence. You can fool yourself, maybe, but excellence itself has no mercy, as my Ben Zen is wont to remind us. And throughout the book Kooser is pointing the way out of the wilderness of actual or potential mistakes, to the extent that even an old bear might be heard to exclaim, "Oh, yeah, right!"
Mostly, as I say, the task of the writing teacher is to ignite enthusiasm and keep it kindled, and with Kooser's quiet humility, that is exactly what The Poetry Home Repair Manual does for me. If you have a learning heart, it might do the same for you.
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* The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets by Ted Kooser. University of Nebraska Press, 2005. $19.95/hardcover.
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