U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser to Visit UW April 6-7 |
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March 28, 2006 -- Ted Kooser, United States Poet Laureate and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, will make two public appearances April 6 and 7 at the University of Wyoming.
Thursday, April 6, he will present a public reading of his work from 7-8:30 p.m., at the UW Art Museum. Friday, April 7, he will participate in a breakfast discussion from 9-10:30 a.m. at the Mathison Library, Room 212 of Hoyt Hall. The UW M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program will host the visit.
Creative Writing Program Director Harvey Hix says Kooser's visit gives an important boost to the program in its inaugural year.
"As a new program, it's important for us to establish a high level of ambition," he says. "It's a great thing for all of our students -- not just the poets among us -- to set the bar high from the start."
As a poet, essayist, and professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Kooser has been widely praised for his plainspoken style, an unmatched gift for metaphor, and his quiet discoveries of beauty in ordinary things. Respected reviewer Dana Gioia once noted that he "has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation."
He earned his bachelor's degree at Iowa State in 1962 and a master's from the University of Nebraska in 1968. Kooser worked many years in the life insurance business, retiring in 1999 as a vice president. By the early 1980s, he was widely recognized as a talented poet and soon received a series of regional and national awards.
His most recent honors include two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry; a Pushcart Prize; the Stanley Kunitz Prize from Columbia University; the Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah magazine at Washington and Lee University; the appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate; and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his 2004 book "Delights and Shadows."
Hix says the strength of Kooser's writing can be attributed to his background outside of academia and the publishing world.
"Ted Kooser comes from that tradition of great 20th century poets who come to the art from outside of academia and bring 'real world' experience to their work," Hix says. "T.S. Elliot was an officer in a bank; William Carlos Williams was a doctor; and, like Kooser, Wallace Stevens worked in the insurance business. I think in many ways it gives him the ability to know his audience and know to whom he is speaking ... and that's not necessarily other academics."
For more information, call (307) 766-2867.
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U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.
Posted on Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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