Delights & Shadows

This has been the hardest book for us to get and keep in the store after Ted Kooser was named the Pulitzer Prize winner for this book of poems.

Recently named Poet Laureate of the United States, Kooser is known for his unique correspondence in poetry with Jim Harrison, among other things. This Copper Canyon Press title is at the store now, in paperback at $15.

Here is a sample from Delights & Shadows, Student, one poem in this collection:

The green shell of his backpack makes him lean
into wave after wave of responsibility
and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,

paddling ahead. He has extended his neck
to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak,
breaks the cold surf. He's got his baseball cap on

backward as up he crawls, out of the froth
of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

"Heavy with hope..." quite a nice turn of phrase, don't you think?