Kooserites!

First of all, I have nothing against Ted Kooser. I've enjoyed his subtle and understated poetry and he seems to be one of the few poets that would be enjoyable to rub elbows with for a few hours. The fact that he is the poet laureate has not seemed to affect him at all. However, I dislike the disturbing trend that I've seen in poetry: people trying to write like Kooser, but failing totally.

You recognize them immediately. The poem starts on some mundane subject, and your eyes sort of slither down the (usually) very tall and slender poem. You don't get it, and try again. Slither. You try again and still don't understand why you're wasting your time reading this poem. Ted Kooser gives you a reason to bother; Kooserites never do. Their poems usually sound/look like this:

Grand-dad never gave me a reason
to want to sit in his lap
lean, wind-whipped,
he talked too loud
and too much
about stuff I didn't
understand, stuff I knew
my business-suit dad
didn't want to here
but I still held up
my arms
so I could watch
that Adams apple
bob and jerk
in that chicken-skinny throat

That's a Kooserite poem. Like every bad poem in the world, it gives you no reason to reread it. It doesn't even give you a reason to hate it---those poems often catch and linger longest in your mind. It's the stuff that, after the writer finishes and glances around the art center, people cough and look embarrassed, trying to find something interesting about chicken-skinny throats.

Kooser's poems have a place. But I'd rather have a brash, raw, honest, untutored poem than some depressing, empty poem that wears a slimy veneer of mysteriousness, pretending to have some magic meaning that reappears to Those Who See. It's easier to shoot down someone who writes a happy poem than someone who talks about the way that someone fingers the mole on their throat.

I find it much more likely that someone enjoyed one of those icy-warm spring days when the neighbors chimes tinkle and you're barefoot, even though your toes are turning blue and the ground is still frozen, the sun is shining than someone who talks about the grungy guy who picks his nose at the cafe and does nothing else. Poets fake their way through so many poems; it's ugly. Did they really care about that guy?

Most of the time, they didn't give a darn, they were just afraid of the old crone who runs the local writer's group who told you that romance and love are cliches.

Don't be a Kooserite. Feel your way through a poem with your hands before you force other people to slither through it.