The Life of Ted Kooser
As you probably guessed from the title, I am doing an analysis on a poet, and my poet is the one and only Ted Kooser. In this paragraph, I'll be explaining some key things about his life, like a summarized biography. So let's start with the basics; He was born in Ames, Iowa in 1939 and is now living in Garland, Nebraska, currently working as a visiting english professor in the University of Nebraska.
But before he came to the whole profession of teaching, he had different thoughts and approaches to the world, and that approach was poetry. Ted wanted to "show the extraordinary in the ordinary." Basically, his goal was to make small, normal things look interesting to people who walk by it everyday, like the common man taking a walk in the evening or a child who walks by it on his way to school, and he got what he wanted, but not right away. In his travels he has written over a dozen books, from back in the late 1960's all the way to the 21st century, and they were all on wonderful, deep poetry. Unfortunately, he did have some hardships in his life, like many people who want to do something big, a change in the society, like Ted Kooser had encountered cancer, but even then, he kept writing books about his pain and suffering.
Until... his books and his writing style got so advanced, that he was appointed as a poet laureate from 2004-2006. A poet laureate is someone who writes poetry as a profession by being appointed by the government, like for special occasions and things like that. And in those two years, his mission/wish was finally accomplished. He had accomplished a project for the newspaper in those two years: American Life in Poetry, which is like a column in the newspaper where weekly poems come out, and that is how he achieved the goal of making normal things stand out, because it still went on after Ted Kooser had completed his two years as laureate.
Even today, Ted Kooser is still well known for his style of writing and his "gift of metaphors."
But before he came to the whole profession of teaching, he had different thoughts and approaches to the world, and that approach was poetry. Ted wanted to "show the extraordinary in the ordinary." Basically, his goal was to make small, normal things look interesting to people who walk by it everyday, like the common man taking a walk in the evening or a child who walks by it on his way to school, and he got what he wanted, but not right away. In his travels he has written over a dozen books, from back in the late 1960's all the way to the 21st century, and they were all on wonderful, deep poetry. Unfortunately, he did have some hardships in his life, like many people who want to do something big, a change in the society, like Ted Kooser had encountered cancer, but even then, he kept writing books about his pain and suffering.
Until... his books and his writing style got so advanced, that he was appointed as a poet laureate from 2004-2006. A poet laureate is someone who writes poetry as a profession by being appointed by the government, like for special occasions and things like that. And in those two years, his mission/wish was finally accomplished. He had accomplished a project for the newspaper in those two years: American Life in Poetry, which is like a column in the newspaper where weekly poems come out, and that is how he achieved the goal of making normal things stand out, because it still went on after Ted Kooser had completed his two years as laureate.
Even today, Ted Kooser is still well known for his style of writing and his "gift of metaphors."