Category Archives: poetry

I hope you enjoy the lovely poem by Laurel Blossom as much as I did. And here’s the link if you care to read my essay on E.B. White, also one of my favorite writers (as referenced by Ted Kooser below).

American Life in Poetry: Column 369
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
E.B. White, one of my favorite writers, used to say, “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” but that doesn’t mean that writing has to be simple, which is a different matter. Here’s a fine poem by Laurel Blossom of South Carolina that’s been simplified into a pure, clean beauty.

Red Balloon Rising

I tied it to your wrist
With a pretty pink bow, torn off
By the first little tug of wind.
I’m sorry.

I jumped to catch it, but not soon enough.
It darted away.

It still looked large and almost within reach.
Like a heart.

Watch, I said.
You squinted your little eyes.

The balloon looked happy, waving
Good-bye.

The sky is very high today, I said.
Red went black, a polka dot,

Then not. We watched it,
Even though we couldn’t

Spot it anymore at all.
Even after that.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Laurel Blossom, whose most recent book of poetry is “Degrees of Latitude” Four Way Books, 2007. Poem reprinted from “Pleiades,” Vol. 31, no. 1, 2011, by permission of Laurel Blossom and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org

Simply fantastic poem today from Ted Kooser’s column. If you haven’t checked out his “American Life in Poetry” yet – now is the day. For a born and bred East Coaster, this poem surprised me and actually made me long to live on the plains.

American Life in Poetry: Column 367
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I’ve lived on the Great Plains all my life, and if I ever left this region for too long, I would dearly
miss it. This lovely poem by Carol Light, who lives in Washington state, reminds me of that.

Prairie Sure

Would I miss the way a breeze dimples
the butter-colored curtains on Sunday mornings,
or nights gnashed by cicadas and thunderstorms?
The leaning gossip, the half-alive ripple
of sunflowers, sagging eternities of corn
and sorghum, September preaching yellow, yellow
in all directions, the windowsills swelling
with Mason jars, the blue sky bluest borne
through tinted glass above the milled grains?
The dust, the heat, distrusted, the screen door
slapping as the slat-backed porch swing sighs,
the hatch of houseflies, the furlongs of freight trains,
and how they sing this routine, so sure, so sure—
the rote grace of every tempered life?

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org),
publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Carol Light, whose poems have been published in Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. Poem reprinted from The Literary Bohemian, Issue 12, June 2011, by permission of Carol Light and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.