It’s the birthday of Ted Kooser (b. 1939), the first Great Plains poet to be named U.S. poet laureate (2004-2006). Kooser’s poetry “celebrates the quotidian and captures a vanishing way of life” (poetryfoundation.org).

(Word of the day: quotidian, a word that refers to the everyday or ordinary while itself being one of the snazzier words in the English language. Say it with me: quotidian. Quotidian. Quotidian.)

Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa, graduated from Iowa State University in 1962, taught high school, tried a graduate program at the University of Nebraska and got a master’s in 1968 but at the same time kind of flunked out, and started working at an insurance company (YAWN—sorry, I almost fell asleep writing that), where he continued until retiring in 1999 as a vice president. He evidently made his peace with the U of Nebraska because he started teaching creative writing there part time in 1970.

Kooser’s collections include, among others, Sure Signs (1980); Blizzard Voices (1986; trigger warning: this one is about the “Children’s Blizzard” of 1888 in which many children died trying to get home from school during a raging blizzard); Delights and Shadows (2004), which won the Pulitzer; and Valentines (2008). He’s also written nonfiction, including the essay collection Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (2002) and a book called The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (2005). Kooser’s recent poem “A Letter” appears in the Fall 2018 issue of the North American Review, which I mention solely because I had a short story in that same issue. (For some reason, Kooser’s name is on the cover, and mine isn’t.)

Kooser once said in an interview, “My writing has brought me into contact with thousands of people, but at every public appearance I have wished I could be at home with my wife and my books and my dog” (Dale Mackey, “Writing Rural: Ted Kooser,” Daily Yonder, April 23, 2015).

Kooser’s poem “Abandoned Farmhouse” begins:

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;…

(Read the whole thing here.)

Have an abundantly sunny Thursday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.