Thank you for such a wonderful hour. I am thrilled to have been introduced to Mr. Kooser and his work, and can’t wait to check out this book.

That is unfortunate. Poetry, I believe, is best when it is filtered through the listener’s ear. In his presentation at UCBS (YouTube video) he refers to the ideal reader. I think he and other Poets assume we-the listeners-want to read what they have to say when in fact we’d love to hear what they have to say. I hope he records his best works for us to enjoy. I bet his Mom would have loved listening to it.

Radio does not get any better than your program with Ted Kooser. I have saved the program on my computer and I know I will never erase it. Ted Kooser’s letter to his mother is a powerful and wonderful example of what can be accomplished with words.

During this last winter, encouraged by my 12 year old granddaughter to recount memories for her Elder report, Finally, after 64 years, I found the courage to start writing about how WW2 affected me. I was devastated on my father’s return from the war because I didn’t know hime. He spent over two years in German prison camp – enlisted in 1941, left for Europe in 1942, was captured in February 1943, and returned in May of 1945. As you and many of your call-in listeners related, I also found great healing in the writing.

Now, I must order your book and enjoy it over and over.
Thank you for your diligence in writing.

I lost my Mom, Peg Caufield on September 29, 2009 who was just one day short from celebrating her 60th anniversary with husband, Ed Caufield.

Just as her death, complicated by progressive dementia strained us all as it approached, family and friends were uplifted as we celebrated her life as a wife, mother, grandmother, educator & humanitarian.

Amongst the funeral attendees was my best friend who had been inspired to write a poem at his mother’s passing. My Mom was Christian and his Mom was Jewish. They were great friends and enriched one another’s lives as well as the lives of one another’s children.

Fitingly I read the same scripture from Proverbs, “A Woman of Valor” at my Mom’s funeral in tribute as he read at his mother’s funeral.

At a post funeral “life celebration” dinner my friend read his poem entitled, “Requiem for a Mother” as follows:

By Erv Dworkin

Words are futile fabrications, teardrops in a sea.
To phrase the fervent feelings that dwell inside of me
For emotions speak in voices more subtle and sublime,
In movements more mellifluous than any pantomime

No mortal masterpieces of antiseptic art,
Nor literary platitudes can properly impart
The beauty of the bittersweet abiding in the heart

Love, and truth, and beauty are often trimmed in pain,
Just as heaven’s azure dome is darkened by the rain
But waves of life in water flow, in tears and tide and dew,
And from the earth new life will burst, from mist a rainbow’s hue

So let us laugh and let us love, and let us also cry,
And heed the music in our hearts, and never wonder why.

Thanks to Mr. Kooser and to you for your wonderful show.

Great show today. What a pleasure. My paternal grandfather owned a service station, car repair and blacksmith shop in Elberon, Iowa (pop 150). I saw and touched those hands and can smell the oil and Mom’s home cooking. My grandfather was a cigar and Red Man man.

I graduated from high school in 1957; live in Waltham, MA and will visit my 96 year old Mother in Elberon later this month. Mother Bessie lost her Cedar Rapids home last June via the flooded Cedar River.

Your writings brought me back to Elberon, Vining and the Iowa countryside. I will secure “a love letter” before I return and do readings with Mother. Her eye sight is about five percent on the left eye. Her memory is at ninety-five percent.

Thanks for the good and great memories.

David Kaloupek
Class of ‘57
Keystone, Iowa

Decoration Day

In my kitchen far from home ground
pink and white chrysanthemums bunched in a vase
remind me of

Decoration Day
at the end of May
when my mother and my aunt would clip
nearly all
the crisp dark green stalks of the pinies
full fragrant and spotted with black ants
and cut the juicy stems of yellow crepe irises
and purple velvet ones,
arrange them thickly in glass jars,
and in coffee cans wrapped with aluminum foil.

I don’t remember ever bringing in
a big bouquet for the table;
these fat, heady, rough bundles
were tokens for the dead.

The cans ride on the floor of the car, water sloshing,
to the cemetery.
There we drive slowly
over crunching gravel
to the familiar stops, the stones with our name.
They clip the weeds,
assess the size of the bushes
and the legibility of the lettering.
The vases of wrinkled silver are
placed carefully, nestled against the wind.
We step back to see it looks right.
And we remember.
They are solemn, thoughtful.
Their memories reach back further
and deeper than mine,
for each grave, a lifetime of memory.
Flowers for their mothers, whom I loved,
for their fathers, whom I never knew,
for brothers gone,
a tiny bouquet of sorrow for
the baby who died 25 years before.

I was a child then, running off to explore,
careful not to step on any graves.

-Axie Breen, 1996

“I’m going back.
I’m going back.
The loneliest road
I’ve traveled
is in the past.
It’s in the past.”

From the handwriting it is obvious that the writer was drunk. I googled the phrases and found no indication that it had been published as a poem or song lyric.

Mine may be the only copy of a wistful evocation of the past, whose author is unknown.

“Confetti, those tiny colorful pieces that celebrate our parade with bits of memory, love and laughter. I’ve known Tandy my whole life and, by extension, her parents, Mama and Papa V, if you consider that life starts in first grade…

and bits of memory like their New Milford, Connecticut cottage on the lake where memories of Backgammon rules, woolen blankets on summer nights, knotty pine walls and books and stories invited laughter. And there was always laughter, especially Mama V’s hearty laugh and Papa V’s chuckle….

My daughter’s memories of North Carolina included Grampa V’s finger-paper trick, ‘Go away, Jack, Go away, Jill. Come back, Jack. Come back, Jill…’ She recalled sitting on the kitchen floor with Gramma V and going out to collect giant pine cones,the best found at Mama V’s sister’s whose cherished pound cake recipe I kept filed under “D.” When reorganizing my recipe box years later Heather asked, why it wasn’t under “P” for Pound or “C” for Cake? Because her name was Dede. I’ve used the pine cones more than those recipes since. They’re easier to find.

Mama V was a constant in my visits over the years. Quietly, she’d either tuck a tiny gift or a note into my suitcase on which she’d written, Your Mama V loves you.
I hung the last one she gave me so I see it every day, a guardian angel ornament with colorful beads and a note that said simply, I love you, Mama V.”

This was four pages long. Lots of memories. Thanks for letting me share.

Holley Watts,
Poet, Fund-raiser, Vietnam Vet (wrote a book & co-wrote an award-winning documentary about my Red Cross experience there)
540-248-3677

What a delight to have the opportunity to hear Mr. Kooser on your show.
I had the great honor of hearing Mr. Kooser speak at the Unversity of Hawaii at Manoa. And today, in a rare, quiet, moment I have been able to listen to him again.
The beauty of his poerty is that it translates to any language, any family in the world. I think of my Australian grandmother and her gentle ways, taken long before I could truly appreciate her. Mr. Kooser, thank you for your new and pure work.
Sincerely,
Sharyn Inzunza
Virginia Beach