Editorial Note
Marco Abel, Jessica Poli, and Timothy Schaffert
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Splitting an Order, Ted Kooser, Copper Canyon, 2017
Diane Glancy
Naomi Shihab Nye
Ted Kooser Is My President
Jill McCabe Johnson
What Ted Likes
1,001 Things to Amend Before You Die—Excerpt 244–258
Marjorie Saiser
Ted Is Writing This Morning
Jehanne Dubrow
From Description to Discovery
Pledge
Mary K. Stillwell
A Toast to Chance, Good Fortune, and Ted Kooser
Amelia María de la Luz Montes
Ted Kooser’s Near South History Tour
Platte River
Andrea Hollander
The Things Themselves
Old Snow
Stephen Behrendt
The Surprising Novelty of the Familiar: Ted Kooser’s Poetry
Sarah McKinstry-Brown
Supper with Amy
Mark Sanders
A Summer Letter to Old Friends Up North
Sharon Chmielarz
Aunt Bertha
Suzanne Ohlmann
Sustenance
James Daniels
The Crucial Lack of Redemption
Sally Green
Wildflower
Samuel Green
Feathering
Mark Irwin
The smaller house
Ivan Young
Translating Ted Kooser
Ferris Wheel
Dana Gioia
Discovering Ted Kooser (1980)
Cody Lumpkin
Old Man in the Hall of Nebraska Wildlife
Christine Stewart-Nuñez
My Poetry Foundation
Medical Arts Building, Watertown
Robert Hedin
Prunings
Debra Nystrom
Inland Sea
Stuart Kestenbaum
The Work at Hand
Michelle Menting
Absorbing the Moment
Ode to the Poster of Reptiles & Amphibians on the Exam Room Wall at the Animal Clinic on South Street
Gerald Costanzo
Conversing with Ted Kooser for Nearly Fifty Years
Barbara Crooker
Forsythia
Todd Robinson
Broken Summer Sonnet
Faith Shearin
Menagerie
Hope Wabuke
On Ted Kooser: Poet of Clarity & Sight
Afterwards
Katie Schmid
The Mechanic
Turning 32
Grace Bauer
Summer Morning Walks: 4 Postcards for Ted Kooser
Stacey Waite
The Politics of Noticing: Ted Kooser in Poetry and Pedagogy
James Crews
More in Time: A Letter to Ted
Trey Moody
Good Morning
The Oriole
Jessica Poli
Holmes Lake
Connie Wanek
Sign Painter
Twyla M. Hansen
I Never Thought I’d Outlive My Evergreens
Tami Haaland
Sewing Room, 1973
Jeffrey Harrison
Early Wonderment
Peggy Shumaker
Ted Talk
Sarah A. Chavez
Ted Kooser and the Act of Poetry as Life Practice
Home Again
Saddiq Dzukogi
To See Beyond the Self
Song to a Birdwoman
Adrian Koesters
“Late Summer”: Doing the Work and Giving the Gift
Denise Banker
At the Rehabilitation Hospital
Biljana D. Obradović
Tribute to Ted Kooser: “A Poem Has to Be Something More Than a Good Story”
Elegy for an Eastern Fallen Star
Linda Parsons
April Wish
Mark Vinz
Ted Kooser, the Midwest Small Press Poetry Renaissance of the 1960s and ’70s, and a Poem Inspired by Both
Great Plains
JC Reilly
Bathroom Spiders
Freya Manfred
When a Place Finds Voice
Crystal S. Gibbins
Writing toward Home
Lake of the Woods
Jonathan Greene
One Light to Another
Dan Gerber
In Praise of Ted Kooser
Todd Davis
Fishing with Nightcrawlers
Hadara Bar-Nadav
House
Sandra Yanonne
A Valentine Sonnet
Joyce Sutphen
At the Graveyard
Rosemary Zumpfe
Grace in Poetry
Making Ice Angels
Rebecca Macijeski
Making Sense, Making a Life
Time’s Beard, His Closest Thing to Seasons
Amy Plettner
How I Found Ted
Maria Nazos
Tuesdays with Ted Kooser: How I Found the Heart behind My Collection of Poems, Pulse
The Ghost’s Daughter Speaks
Jonis Agee
Mercurius
Matt Mason
Opening Night Rehearsal
Judith Harris
For Ted, On His Hiatus
Karen Head
Ready to Hold My Hand: Ted Kooser as Mentor and Friend
At the St. Elizabeth Mammography Center
Jane Hirshfield
Letter to TK: May 26, 2020
Kwame Dawes
The Chronicler of Sorrows
Fences
Source Acknowledgments
List of Contributors