Flying At Night: Poems 1965- 1985
by Ted Kooser
Ted
Kooser,
former
Poet Laureate of the United States , published
Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985 in 1985. The collection
concerns the provincial United States: the people, places, and animals that
Kooser comes into contact with. Kooser writes about Minnesota,
Kansas, Nebraska—middle America and its inhabitants:
moles, people, birds, oaks—in colloquial diction. Although the diction
is colloquial, and although Kooser is
thrifty with the length of his poems (most poems only measure half a
page in length or less, and only two poems in the entire collection peak at
over a page), Kooser’s choice of words is thoughtful and (if such a word is
appropriate) deep. It is in Kooser’s word choice that Kooser exhibits his
mastery. Kooser blends seamlessly a common thing with another common thing,
thus juxtaposing two common things in a manner that is invigorating and
refreshing. The result is
wondrous. Take, for instance, Kooser’s description
of his father in “Christmas Eve”:
Now my father carries his old heart
in its basket of ribs
like a child coming into the room
with an injured bird.
The discerning reader will note the everyday language (bird, heart, ribs, father), the commonplace adjective, “injured” , and the innocuous verb, “coming”. Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the language’s simplicity, the image as a whole leaps off the page. For me, the image is one in which the speaker’s father is releasing his emotions gingerly. There are, I think, two reasons why I use the adverb, “gingerly”. The first reason is because of Kooser’s image of a “basket of ribs”. The rib basket is one with sharps ends, meaty innards, and liquidy messes coating the meat. Anyone carrying their heart in such a basket is bound to be carrying their heart carefully, gingerly. The second reason that I think the image evokes the adverb “gingerly” is this: Kooser’s choice of the adjective, “old”. Old things must be handled carefully. As a reader, the adjective “old” evokes a sense of the antique, a sense of something fragile and precious, something that should be handled gingerly. For me, the identification of an emotion that is being evoked (gingerly) is significant, because a poem’s tone, its feel, can be set by the evocation of emotions.
The tone of Kooser’s poems is one of gentle exploration, of keen insights, of thoughtful searching. The reader notes, in the excerpt from “Christmas Eve”, the absense of physical action. Many of Kooser’s poems have this dearth. Instead, Kooser analyzes the things which are physically inactive, and he gives to them a kinetic energy that makes his work move. A brief analysis of one of the ways that Kooser achieves this kinetic energy is instructional. In “Christmas Eve”, Kooser outlines the way that the speaker’s father becomes emotional. In none of the four lines is the speaker’s father actually doing anything physical. The carrying of an “old heart in its basket of ribs” could be accomplished while lying on the floor. So, the actual moment that Kooser chooses could be a passive one. But when Kooser uses metaphor and simile to describe the manner in which the speaker’s father carries his heart, the reader understands that there is action, motion, and emotion at work beneath the surface of the speaker’s father’s skin. There is energy and carefulness beneath the skin, Kooser makes clear, even though the epidermis may look still and peaceful.
Kooser is famous for his use of simile and metaphor, as is showcased in “Christmas Eve”. Dana Gioia, for instance, writes in the Hudson Review, “It is a pleasure to read a poet like Kooser whose imagination is naturally metaphorical.” Many of the other poems in Flying at Night follow a formula similar to the one that “Christmas Eve” follows. The genius of Kooser’s work, then, is that he is capable of creating such inventive, imaginative metaphors and similes for each poem. Let’s look at another poem, chosen randomly from Flying at Night, “The Blind Always Come as Such a Surprise”. I will reproduce the poem in full, as the poem (typical of Kooser’s mastery of metaphor and simile) provides a representative (yet random) illustration of Kooser’s poetry:
The blind always come as such a surprise
suddenly filling an elevator
with a great, white porcupine of canes,
or coming down upon us in a noisy crowd
like the eye of a hurricane.
The dashboards of cars stopped at crosswalks
and the shoes of commuters on trains
are covered with sentences
struck down mid-flight by the canes of the blind.
Each of them changes our lives,
tapping across the bright circles of our ambitions
like cracks traversing the favorite china.
Even before we tackle metaphor, the first aspect of the poem that I’d like to point out is the similarity in style and tone between “Christmas Eve” and “The Blind Always Come as Such a Surprise”. For twenty years, Kooser has held his own distinctive style: the quick eye for metaphor, the willingness to poeticize the earthy everyday matters of humanity, the short lines, the lack of meter and rhyme. It is as though Kooser has chosen to play tennis against Robert Frost, only Kooser plays without a net. The tradition that Kooser fits into, then, is one which seems not far removed from the Romantics and Frost. Despite the long distance in years between the two poets, Kooser and Keats have much in common: their poems often concern nature, both have a tendency to personify the inanimate, and both are acutely aware of the line between poetry and vulgarity. In regards to that last similarity, take, for instance, the poem reproduced above. Kooser refrains from any mention of the words ‘handicap’ or ‘disability’ or ‘inequality’. Kooser understands that the reader is aware that the blind are handicapped, so any mention of the handicap would be redundant, crude, and insulting because the mention of a blind person’s handicap would chafe the reader’s intelligence.
We will now discuss Kooser’s attention to metaphor and simile in “The Blind Always Come as Such a Surprise”. Examples include: “A great, white porcupine of canes”, “like the eye of a hurricane”, and “like cracks traversing the favorite china”. What a prolific collection of metaphors and similes in such a short poem! The wonder is that Kooser can build so much in such a short time. Expectations aside, Kooser has built. Let’s look at the first metaphor, the one having to do with porcupines. Again, in this metaphor, Kooser has employed the formula that I outlined earlier. He has taken a very common thing that everyone knows (the white cane of the blind man) and another common thing (a porcupine), and Kooser has juxtaposed the two. When the poem is finished, when the poem has been analyzed, the end result may seem anticlimactic. But the very act of juxtaposing a porcupine and a blind man’s cane is an act that requires a great deal of imagination and genius. On top of that, Kooser writes eloquently. He does not try to blow the reader over with undue force, instead, his poetry is elegantly understated, as can be seen in the last sentence of the poem: “Each of them changes our lives/ tapping across the bright circles of our ambitions/ like cracks traversing the favorite china.” There is a steady cadence in the understatement, and a familiarity like worn wooden stairs. It is the combination of this understated elegance, the startling nature of the metaphors, and the subject matter of his poetry that makes Ted Kooser’s work so dear.
Ultimately, I think it is the subject matter which tells what the book
is about and who the book is for. The metaphors, the similes, and the
elegant writing seem to me simply a
vehicle for expressing what’s really important to Ted: concerns about
his family, insights into nature, and
keen examinations of himself. Kooser describes in the collection’s
first
poem who his ideal reader would be: a beautiful girl with a dirty
raincoat who picks up his book, thumbs through it, and sets
the book back on the shelf. She decides that she could get the
raincoat cleaned for the price of the book, “And she will.” Kooser’s
description of an ideal audience gives us insight into what
type of people he thinks the book is for, and, also, what Flying at
Night is about. Kooser makes
it clear in “Selecting a Reader” that he is writing for the masses of
people, lower middle class, who value practical concerns over
abstract concerns. Accordingly, the book’s subject matter is: the
exploration of the complex qualities of everyday things. The metaphors and
similes accent this exploration because all the things that Kooser works
with in his writing seem to be earthy and usual, but when Kooser applies
metaphor, the reader is able to see a new aspect of an everyday thing.
Ted Kooser
5 out of 5
Reviewed by David
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