Customer Reviews

Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of a Place and Time

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I recently visited Elberon, Iowa, pop. 103+/-. My grandfather owned a service station with gas pumps, mechanic and blacksmith plus bulk fuel delivery businesses. Town people in and entities in Elberon served the area's family farmers.

I remember Elberon was a crossroad for the Northwestern and Milwaukee Road railway companies and an emergency stop on the Lincoln Highway. Today, most businesses, the 80-120 acre family farm and rail right-of-ways have long disappeared.

The survivors: Main Street, the water tower, Methodist Church; U.S. Post Office, fire station, grain elevator, bulk oil & propane business and my Grandfather's service station (now owned by his great grandson) plus a new community center with library and new "The General Store" (serving beverages, meals & milk/bread/videos).

"Lights...." triggered many great and interesting memories. I enjoyed the people, experiences and events of my early life through the experiences, senses and pen of Ted Kooser. Thank you to Ted for sharing his personal adventure and family's history. Thanks to NPR for introducing me to Ted Kooser and his work.

David Kaloupek
Circa `39
Tama County, IA

Viewing the world from his rural perspective in Nebraska's Bohemian Alps, Mr. Kooser continues to remind us that the complexities of our lives are woven from the simplest of threads. This loving memoir demonstrates that his acute observational skills as a poet were already present in childhood. Although this slim volume of prose describes people who have long since departed, Ted has now insured that they will never be forgotten.

Careful, delicate, reverent description pays homage to Kooser's mother's family. Beautifully evoking the Turkey River valley of northeastern Iowa, and the people who lived there in the nineteenth and twentieth century, this brief memoir is a corrective to the dour and dreary portraits of midwestern settlers. Black elms growing up the cliffs behind his grandparents' house, with the limestone bluffs of Wisconsin blinking across the river, invite the reader to savor every element of an overlooked landscape. The book is full of interesting tidbits: "In the 1840s, an artist named Henry Lewis . . . painted a panorama of the Mississippi, from the falls of St. Anthony to New Orleans, on a roll of canvas twelve feet high and 1,325 yards long. The canvas was meant to be scrolled past the proscenium of a theater during a lecture." From the story of Harvey, a talented musician discovered in Clayton County who tours the world with the best orchestras, only to return to the home place when arthritis slows him down, to the grandfather whose life encompassed, on one end, the invention of barb wire and, on the other, the atomic bomb, Kooser captures the fragility of time and the human capacity to adapt to change. Full of beautiful, attentive images such as a childhood glimpse of the white of a field mouse's belly as it naps under the leaf of a tulip vine, as well as the four white columns of smoke from the cemetery as the gravediggers warm the frozen ground for his grandmother's burial, this book is a breathtaking portrait of "the center of our love."

Loved Kooser's Bohemian Alps book. Here his writing is about his family, esp. his mother's family, who were obviously formative for him. A brief but excellent little book capturing something of the essence of a Midwestern river town, and of family: how it works, what it means.

This poet has written the most beautifully simple story I have ever read - completely engaging. The tone is innocent, yet blue-collar wise.

Ted Kooser takes memories of his root family in Iowa and makes it into the reader's own. A beautiful little book by a beloved American poet. If you feel nostalgic for what seemed a simpler life, filled with family and community, Kooser delivers you this gift. Rather than sweet it is real.

A true evocation-I read and re-read the paragraphs as I envisioned each scene in this memoir. I felt each word in every sentence. I admire the experience and the writing. If only I could have been born in the Midwest, perhaps I could be a great writer too.

Great book, I enjoyed reading our state's Poet Laureate's work. As I learned from his book, he hails from across the river (Iowa). Great short read for those who like a visit to the past.