The Goot Blog

Today is Ted Kooser's birthday. A former U.S. poet laureate, he is almost single-handedly responsible for getting me excited about poetry again, after a series of well-meaning English teachers and literature profs had systematically sucked my enthusiasm for it dry. So, at this post-60ish point in my life, I was delighted to read the following quote from the now 72-year-old Mr. Kooser as he reflected on his life.

"The image is this: feeling like one of those telephone poles you see on the street on which a lot of notices have been stapled and then torn away, and they leave little triangles of paper, held by staples. On those notices were things lost and things found and the photos of people missing, and now even the photos are missing as a metaphor for what happens in life. All this experience is tacked upon us and then torn away, and we become a residue of all this experience."

Residue. Metaphors don't get any better than that. Happy birthday, my Midwestern amigo!