"So This Is Nebraska," Ted Kooser
Author: Ted Kooser
The gravel road rides with a slow gallop
over the fields, the telephone lines
streaming behind, its billow of dust
full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds.
On either side, those dear old ladies,
the loosening barns, their little windows
dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs
hide broken tractors under their skirts.
So this is Nebraska.
A Sunday
afternoon; July.
Driving along
with your hand out squeezing the air,
a meadowlark waiting on every post.
Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,
top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,
a pickup kicks its fenders off
and settles back to read the clouds.
You feel like that; you feel like letting
your tires go flat, like letting the mice
build a nest in your muffler, like being
no more than a truck in the weeds,
clucking with chickens or sticky with honey
or holding a skinny old man in your lap
while he watches the road, waiting
for someone to wave to.
You feel like
waving.
You feel like stopping the car
and dancing around on the road.
You wave
instead and leave your hand out gliding
larklike over the wheat, over the houses.
Ted Kooser, “So This Is Nebraska” from Sure Signs. Copyright © 1980 by Ted Kooser. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, www.upress.pitt.edu. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source: Sure Signs (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980)
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I’ve been through Nebraska, but have never lived there. Although it seems like a place where nothing happens, I can see the beauty of simple country life with nothing much around other than the road portrayed in this poem. I love it.
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Being in one of the most well known state makes me forget that life in other states can be very different. Not being from the countryside can make me forget how different life can be.
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Imagery : Descriptive language that evokes sensory experience. Creates the color and texture of the written work. Shapes the reader’s perceptions. Stimulates ideas or vivid pictures in the reader’s mind.
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This gives me a thought that it can get quiet in Nebraska. It seems like a nice place to stay at to look at nature.
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This is exactly how I image a country setting in Nebraska. This is beautifully said. The contrast of nature and man-made devices in one stanza it interesting too.
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Tone: The text’s attitude toward an event or situation- confessional, solemn, playful, urgent, relaxed, ironic, eulogy.
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You can sense the author’s love for this place as he describes it you feel the nostalgia, even if you have never lived there. It just feels like home.
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Now I feel like taking a trip to Nebraska and just driving around the countryside in the summer with the windows down and my arm out the window.
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End-Stopped : When a line ends with a complete phrase, or with punctuation (a dash, or closing parenthesis, colon, semicolon, question mark, or period). The opposite of ’enjambed". Can create a sense of order
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This is a really wonderful form to talk about your land, and a good form to let the feelings talk about it.
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Giving human traits to the inanimate objects was fun to read. I grew up in NE and consider it my home. Likening the old barn to old ladies was genius! I enjoyed them all and took me back to my youth :-)
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With the descriptive language used in the poem it seem that Nebraska is a amazing place to stay at when you need a break from a huge populated city. Nebraska sounds like the ideal countryside trip.
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