The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

"No other poet seems better suited to represent the United States as its Laureate in this era than Ted Kooser, and The Poetry Home Repair Manual should enhance his grip on our slumbering Republic."—Larry Woiwode, Poet Laureate of North Dakota, in North Dakota Quarterly

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 friend—a 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 has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can 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.

Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (2004-2006), is a visiting professor in the English department of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a retired insurance executive. He is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently the Pulitzer Prize-winning Delights & Shadows. His prose book, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, won numerous awards, including the Barnes and Noble Discover Award for nonfiction finalist, and is available in a Bison Books edition.