Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Ted Kooser (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Kooser is the master of the short poem.  I found it impossible to put Sure Signs down until I had finished the entire book.  It is a pleasure to read a poet like Kooser whose imagination is naturally metaphorical.”
--Hudson Review

“Ted Kooser’s Sure Signs could well become a classic, precisely because so many of the poems are not only excellent but are readily possessible.”
--Black Warrior Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (June 30, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822953137
• ISBN-13: 978-0822953135
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ted Kooser was the United States Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006 and won a Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems DELIGHTS AND SHADOWS. He is the author of twelve full-length volumes of poetry and several books of nonfiction, and his work has appeared in many periodicals. This is his first children's book. He lives in Garland, Nebraska.Barry Root has illustrated many books for children, including THE CAT WHO LIKED POTATO SOUP by Terry Farish and THE BIRTHDAY TREE by Paul Fleischman. He lives in Quarryville, Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great collection, October 6, 2004

By 

[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Ted Kooser is the poet of the common man. He is known as a regionalist, though his poems speak to people from all over the country. And his selected poems show you exactly the skill of this poet. Kooser is the master of the short poem and of the simple poem. He is a pleasure to read. This collection contains such fine poems such as "Selecting a Reader", "Spring Plowing", "A Summer Night", "Carrie", "A Hairnet with Stars" and "Abandoned Farmhouses" (which might be his best poem). I highly recommend this collection.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the reason I like poetry, November 27, 2006

By 

Lee Tasey (Lincoln, NE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I'm 32 and got into poetry late in life, probably because I didn't know what the heck a poem was or how, assuming the poem was even intelligible, it could change your life. But all that changed when I discovered Sure Signs.

What I like about Mr. Kooser's poems is that I can actually understand them. I was suprised to read a poet this readable, a poet who helped me to see the small, beautiful things in life, and, perhaps most of all, drove me to the library where I checked out more volumes of poetry.

What amazed me is how Mr. Kooser can put the profound into very simple words. I can say that after reading these poems, and others like them, I am a better human being than I was before I started reading poetry. This wouldn't be the case if I hadn't found a poet I could finally understand. I'll never read "academic" poetry again.


Also recommended: How to Lose Your Faith in Divinity School

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Symbols and Landscapes in Ted Kooser's Sure Signs, August 22, 2009

By 

Matthew W. Kingore (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

From the vacant rooms in "An Empty Place" (p. 44) and "North of Alliance" (p. 51) to the forsaken pastures of "Abandoned Farmhouse" (p. 64), the cold Midwestern landscape of Ted Kooser's Sure Signs seems, at times, the picture of neglect. While the `empty house' in "North of Alliance" has seemingly "nothing / to tell us the style of people / who lived here," the "Abandoned Farmhouse" speaks sorrowful volumes of its former inhabitants. In the narratives of these poems characters are known only by their absence, defined only by the traces they leave behind.

But amidst the gloom of abandoned spaces and anxieties about silence, Kooser shows the reader the permanency of hope and of belief. The dismantled church in "The Red Wing Church" (p. 81)--parts from which now decorate gardens, porches and the mayor's house--is undeniably "still a church." And the ringing church bell in "Sunday Morning" (p. 93) blares out deafeningly at the end of the collection as it "tolls its thankfulness." Churches, in this collection, become a symbol not so much of the theology that built them, but of the congregations they shelter from an indifferent natural world.

Though the landscape in this collection is scarred by the ravages of time, and many of its inhabitants have departed, Kooser shows the reader sure signs of the lives they lived and of the things in which they believed. It is a collection that bares reflection for its strange mix of nostalgia and contemplation of the deepest problems of modern life. Sure Signs is Kooser's answer to what turn-of-the-century German sociologist George Simmel described as "the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life." Though personal histories in this collection are subverted by a common history that connects person to person and generation to generation, it remains an exploration of tragedies so heart-rending they could only occur on a personal level.