Two Poems

Abstract

Daniel Simon is WLT’s assistant director and editor in chief. His most recent publications include an edited volume, Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology, 1867–2017 (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2017), and an essay, “Mapping Great Plains Poetry: Nebraska and Beyond”(Great Plains Quarterly, fall 2017). Editorial note: Visit the WLT website to read the full-length version of this interview. photo : alba simon WORLDLIT.ORG 53 Two Poems by Ted Kooser The Constellation I was on my way home from a party, ten-thirty, a dark winter night, no stars, a few snowflakes drifting down over the arms of my headlights, which were searching the back of the darkness, pulling things out, a mailbox, another, a cat carrying sparklers. At the edge of a town, I passed four stars, placed on the untracked snow in a cold old churchyard. They were of course those solar-powered lights for marking paths, though no one walked among them at that hour. They made up the only constellation I could see, and though the dead lay on their backs, and might have looked up if they wanted to, their eyes were closed, and not a soul was finding any meaning in it. Crossing Nebraska The horizon draws back and draws back like a dustpan, a pale blue plastic one, each time leaving a dark line at its edge, one of those ’30s dust-bowl windbreaks that haven’t been bulldozed and burned to make room for more corn. Those plus a few scattered farms and maybe a town not yet swept up with the others, lifting its water tower to show off its name. As we speed on, in destiny’s direction, past what’s been left and what’s to leave, each of those windbreaks sweeps past and is gone, like the hand of a stopwatch seen from miles above, all of us racing against it, a few of us knowing we are. First publication Copyright © 2017 by Ted Kooser Simon: Pulling back from the abyss? Kooser: I don’t know. I don’t think I can articulate it very well. There’s a huge empty void out there, and I don’t want to get there. I want all these things in front of it. Simon: The theme for our November issue is “Belief in an Age of Intolerance.” What can poetry teach us about tolerance? Kooser: Tolerance in physics, as I understand it, sets acceptable or understood limits for deviations, and civil behavior also exists between agreed-upon limits. I think poetry can illustrate or display examples of those tolerances. My poem “Two” is about how we accept and accommodate each other. It’s a favorite poem of mine because of its apparent simplicity. But it isn’t simple, at all. I was pleased that David Barber at The Atlantic seemed to see in it that complexity in the presence of the simple. Simon: Is there anything else you’d like to add in that regard? Kooser: What I might say is that I see writing poems and painting pictures as being affirmations of life. July 2017 ...