The Poetry Home Repair
Manual: Practical Advice for Beginnin Poets,
by Ted Kooser
Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2005
Former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ted Kooser is a prolific, plain-spoken poet whose work is admired for its straightforward approach to the complex subtleties of life. As Poet Laureate, Kooser instituted the “American Life in Poetry” newspaper column, provided free to any American newspaper that wishes to carry it. Kooser so believes that poetry can be a part of everyone’s life, that he penned The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, so that even those without an MFA or graduate degree could understand the basic tenets of what transforms lines of verse from Hallmark-cliché to moving poetry.
Because this book is geared towards beginners, poets with years of writing and publishing experience might find it a bit too rudimentary in approach. But those who have always wanted to write but never had the opportunity will find it a very good introduction to the idea of craft – poetry is not just a bunch of sentences chopped up into smaller lines.
Chapters are not arranged according to various “rules” of poetry such as the line, rhyme, rhythm, form, etc. All the above are discussed as part of more general chapter headings such as “Writing for Others,” “Writing about Feelings,” and “Controlling Effects through Careful Choices.” Kooser uses poems by other poets within his discussions of topics, including Ron Rash's "The Men Who Raised the Dead" as an example of a syllabic poem, and Yehuda Amichai's "I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once" as an example of a poem from memory.
It is apt that the first chapter of the book is titled “A Poet’s Job Description,” in which Kooser plainly states “You’ll never be able to make a living writing poems. We’d better get this money business out of the way before we go any further.” And Kooser should know. The salary for the sitting Poet Laureate of the United States is $35,000. Most literary journals pay contributors in copies of the issue in which their poems appear. Anyone looking to become rich through poetry should rethink their aims.
But what Kooser does through the rest of the Manual is to impart a feeling of why – even though no one seems willing to pay poets for their writing – poetry matters, why poems speak to people. The Poetry Home Repair Manual helps beginning poets figure out what it is they want to say, and how to say it best so that others may understand the message they want to impart.
163 pp.
