Synopses & Reviews
Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention. Memories of his grandmother's cooking are juxtaposed with reflections about the old-fashioned outhouse on his property. When casting his eye on social progress, Kooser reminds us that the closing of local schools, thoughtless county weed control, and irresponsible housing development destroy more than just the view.
In the end, what makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, or baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood. This writer is a seer in the truest sense of the word, discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, the deep beneath the shallow, the abiding wisdom in the pithy Bohemian proverbs that are woven into his essays.
Review
"Reading Ted Koosers Local Wonders, I feel like Ive wandered into another world, a place where the past enduresbroken down a little, its trueand where the present contains enough room to pay attention to the people and the countryside around you. This is simple, patient prose, the annotations of living in a wide-open place."Verlyn Klinkenborg
Review
"In this elegaic volume of four chapters, National Poet Laureate Kooser shares with the reader a lifetime of observations about home, familiy, and land distlled into a series of sometimes sparkling, other times electrifying, and always engaging scenes that read like a poets diary."Mark Easter, Colorado Review
Review
"Call them stories then. Call them letters from a friend. Call them what you wish, but read them."Nebraska Life
Review
"Call them stories then. Call them letters from a friend. Call them what you wish, but read them."Nebraska Life
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"Ted Koosers Local Wonders is the quietest magnificent book Ive ever read."Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall
Review
"Kooser claims he doesnt like to travel, but for someone who stays put, he does an awful lot of sightseeing. Hindsight, foresight, near sight, far sight, insight, out of sight, you name itLocal Wonders takes us both out far and in deep."Judith Kitchen, author of Only the Dance: Essays on Time and Memory
Review
http://crickhollow.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/poetry-home-repair-manual-small-press-month-book-recommendation-5/
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"A quietly eloquent diary of a year in a small town in Nebraska. . . . This is a heartfelt plainspoken book about slowing down and appreciating the world around you. . . . Maybe its exactly the feeling your friends, even you, are looking for."New York Times book critic Janet Maslin on CBS News Sunday Morning
Review
“Ted Kooser is a travel agent of words. He transports readers to a landscape of old grain trucks and weedsprayers and outhouses. Of country schools and grain elevators and fried pigs ear crumbled over oatmeal. Of handmade quilts that cost exactly 12.43. His destination? The Bohemeian Alps, a cluster of affectionately nicknamed silty clay knolls in southeastern Nebraska. His tourists? Anyone.”L Magazine: Lincolns Premier Lifestyle Magazine
Review
"With Thoreaulike reflection and insight, the author artfully engaged this reader in a lyrical embroidery of this neighboring frontier. Weaving images in soothing language, Kooser meticulously captures the nuances of life as it evolves in a country setting in which he is both observer and participant."Dan Semrad, Lincoln Journal Star
Review
“This small gem of a book matches perfectly the vision of our Heartlands--conveying the beauty and courage of living close and deep.”Larry Smith, Heartlands: A Magazine of Midwest Life and Art
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"Local Wonders should be read and reread. It is a treasure, like the ripe wild plums Mr. Kooser, a retired insurance executive, picks along rural Nebraska roadsides."Dan Barber, Dallas Morning News
Review
http://lindsleyrinard.blogspot.com/2010/10/ted-kooser-poet-extraordinaire-this.html -- Carolyn Thomas de la Pea - American Studies
About the Author
Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate (2004-6) and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, is University of Nebraska Presidential Professor. In addition to his many volumes of poetry, he is the author of
Lights on a Ground of Darkness and
The Poetry Home Repair Manual, both available in Bison Books editions.