Reviews for Valentines

The average rating for Valentines based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-10-23 00:00:00 Angel Robles This one is my favorite of the collection: Splitting An Order I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half, maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread, no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place, and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner, observing his progress through glasses that moments before he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half onto the extra plate that he had asked the server to bring, and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon, her knife and her fork in their proper places, then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees and meets his eyes and hold out both old hands to him. Now that’s a love poem! But not what I expected when I opened a book—slightly holding my nose in anticipation—called Valentines. When it comes to poetry, I like me some Wordsworth, a pretty conventional member of the canon, but I also like Blake, who’s maybe seen more as an outsider. I like T.S. Eliot, sure, with complicated figurative language and layered allusions, but I also like more straightforward writers such as Mary Oliver and Robert Bly. I like Celan, Akhmatova, James Wright. I also like some slam/spoken word poets such as Patricia Smith. So: All over the place. Which brings me to Ted Kooser, an insurance salesman and poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner and populist. Accessible, which for many poets and critics means no good. I like “difficult” poetry, too, I really do, I think of it as poetry of the head, but I have been also long interested in poetry of the heart, of emotions, of deep feeling. But where do I draw the line here? Valentine’s Day poems? I have written some myself that have been read by a single reader and never again by any others. Heart-felt, but often sappy. Not “literary” in most respects, something Kooser himself acknowledges about his poems in his introduction to this volume. I sometimes do like “occasional” poems, though, and poems in interesting, even sometimes gimmicky, forms, such as concrete poetry or poems for weddings and funerals. I love Richard Hugo’s 31 Letters and 13 Dreams. I like poetic forms as much as free verse. I liked the haiku exchanges Kooser did with his friend Jim Harrison (Braided Creek). I liked his later writing “postcard poems” to Harrison every day after he took early morning walks as he recovered from melanoma (Winter Morning Walks). The gimmick of this collection is that Kooser wrote Valentine’s Day poems to his wife, but then—with his wife’s blessing--sent them playfully out to a widening audience of women over the space of many years, several hundred, on postcards, until he decided to stop in 2007, overwhelmed by the task and expense. I think that is a cool idea, and I think it is cooler still that there is both “literary” appeal to some of them and also that some that are just fun, Kooser not taking himself or poetry too seriously. Here’s Kooser on NPR on (his) Valentines poetry, and at this link you can hear him read and read along with several poems from the collection: I also very much like this poem: New Potato This is just one of the leathery eggs the scuffed-up, dirty turtle of the moon buried early in spring, her eyes like stars fixed on the future, and, inside its red skin, whiteness, like all of the moons to come, and marvelous, buttered with light.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-02 00:00:00 Chris Reitan Charming and delightful. I love that this is a collection of actual Valentine’s Day poems Kooser wrote for years and sent to his female friends and readers, an act of “foolishness” as he calls it that his wife encouraged. The ones I especially enjoyed in this collection are Pocket Poem, Song of the Ironing Board, In The Alley, A Map of the World, Skater, Screech Owl, Oh Mariarchi Me, A New Potato, This Paper Boat.