The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets »

A former insurance executive turned award-winning poet and writer, this author of the acclaimed look at the Nebraska heartland, Local Wonders, says that he has what he calls "wolf vision" -- an ability that lets him see every change in the landscape around him.

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 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.

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.

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“In his own poetry he renders his subjects sensually while projecting an engaging poetic presence. In The Poetry Home Repair Manual he shares his writerly wisdom; any poet, beginner or professional, will come away from reading it with some useful reminder of how to make his or her poems better.”