[New-Poetry] old poem made obsolete by current events

[David Bircumshaw]

Only opinion based on the only Kooser poem I have seen: 

a drone.

Bored in the bar

Best

dave


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: steve moore 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views 
  Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 6:25 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] old poem made obsolete by current events


  I have a personal grudge against Mr. Collins, so the comparison of him with any poet puts the latter on a pedestal. Kooser's a good poet, though I wouldn't jump in to putting him among the ranks of poetic genius. He has a few poems that sock me in the stomach, but overall, the jury is still out for me. I may be heading to Nebraska for my PhD, so that may have an affect on my opinion in the future.


  On Aug 25, 2006, at 6:50 AM, TheOldMole wrote:


    A little nervous about the notion that one has to throw Billy Collins into the mix before one can evaluate Kooser. But I agree that at his best, he creates visual images that resonate.
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Anthony Lawrence 
      To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views 
      Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 2:39 AM
      Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] old poem made obsolete by current events


      What's the attitude to Ted Kooser's work among this group? I find the best of his poems have the ability 
      to stop me in my tracks. His imagery can be astounding. I think he leaves someone like Billy Collins
      in a dustcloud.




      On 25/08/2006, at 4:45 AM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:


        Astronomers strip Pluto of its planet status 
        http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060824/sc_nm/science_planets_dc_5

        --
        The 10th Planet


        Every night they wheel out
        the great siege gun of Palomar
        trying to bring down the walls of darkness
        surrounding a tenth planet.
        Out beyond Neptune and the orbit of Pluto
        where the Sun's gravitational empire
        begins to fray and fall apart.
        The tenth planet that might be
        the foreshadowing of what our world could become,
        a denatured earth, clear-cut, stripped
        and left for dead as progress
        grinds on into deserts of sawdust and slag,
        bonemeal and unarable sand. Or when
        we turn on each other, petty tyrants imposing
        martial law, torturers and detention camps,
        the missiles and minarets, borders closed
        with sutures of barbwire. Remember
        that at its height as many as ten-thousand slaves
        were sacrificed in a single year to some Aztec sun-god.
        But a reign of centuries can end in a hundred days,
        Cortez with his gold lust and upper-case God
        destroyed that civilization founded on carnage--
        Comes now the conquistador with horses and crosses,
        the sword and gunpowder, smallpox
        and syphilis. Always religions go awry,
        creating god out of fear and the need to make someone,
        something, responsible for bad weather
        or blindness, for wars and total eclipses
        of the sun. And when they find that tenth planet,
        its face in the little handmirror of the universe
        that rests at the base of the telescope,
        it won't tell us anything. A face marked
        by craters and half-hidden in shadow.
        It won't look at us, it will turn away.

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