The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

Recently appointed as the new U. S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages ofThe Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poetsaspiring or practicingcan use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry's ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old frienda friend who is willing to share everything he's learned about the art he's spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.

Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate (2004–2006), is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a retired insurance executive. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Delights & Shadows and The Blizzard Voices, available in a Bison Books edition. He is the coauthor (with Steve Cox) of Writing Brave and Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing, also available in a Bison Books edition.