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The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. By Ted Kooser. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xii + 163 pp. References. $19.95.
A beginning poet would be well advised to read and take to heart the plain-spoken wisdom offered in Nebraska writer and U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's poetry writing "manual." What most literary types refer to as the writer's "voice," Kooser prefers to call "presence," and his "presence" here reminds one of a kindly uncle explaining the ins and outs of writing poems. The book's informal and engaging tone is bound to charm even the most arrogant black-beret-wearing poet into rethinking some cherished myths about being one. Practicing what he preaches about considering one's "chosen reader," Kooser shows that he understands the pitfalls the beginning poet is prey to by relating, for instance, that as a teenager poet wannabe he "took to walking around in rubber shower sandals and white beachcomber pants that tied with a piece of clothesline rope ... let [his] hair grow longer and tried to grow a beard." By poking fun at himself, he encourages the fledgling poet to see past the pose of being a poet to the devotion to...