Sherry Chandler

(Spelling corrected — give me a break, Alan. It was early in the morning.) The NYTimes is announcing this morning that Ted Kooser has won the Pulitzer in poetry for his book Delights and Shadows. (You may have to register to see this article.)

from the NYTimes:

Mr. Kooser, of Garland, Neb., is the poet laureate of the United States. Like Wallace Stevens, Mr. Kooser, 65, worked in life insurance for much of his career. He was vice president of Lincoln Benefit Life Insurance, where he wrote advertising copy and oversaw legal affairs; he rose daily at 4:30 a.m. to compose poetry, which he asked his secretary and colleagues to critique. He retired in 1998.
Clarity is the hallmark of Mr. Kooser’s style, with deceptively modest metaphors grounded in the Nebraska landscape. The Bloomsbury Review described his work as “like clean, clear water.”

A NYTimes interview with Kooser here.

Alan MacKellar has a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics. He was chair of physics at the University of Kentucky until he retired, and I don’t think UK has updated its photo since. He is also a well-known black and white photographer, with an exhibit upcoming at the Lexington Central Library gallery in November, and an interest in a photographic processing technique called mordancage. He’s a relative newcomer to poetry. In fact, he told me that he once thought of publishing a collection of his photographs, each matched to a poem. But he couldn’t find the right poems, so he decided to learn to write them for himself. (A small ghost of that project below, perhaps.) Imagery from physics and photography enrich his work. He is currently circulating his manuscript poetry collection sans photographs, Encounters on a Light Cone.

“Vine Street Market” was published in the short-lived but glorious V Magazine. Alan’s photograph of a well-known gourd seller at the Vine Street Market was exhibited at the Lexington Central Library gallery in 1991.

Vine Street Market
Any pole beans today the market hawker
asks we hesitate by his booth he lifts
a bunch swollen with a pregnancy of seeds
sifts them slowly through his fingers
back into the bushel his practiced art
seduces two more dollars from me
my daughter and I walk back and forth
three times she searching for the perfect
last tomato of the season rejects Madison
and Casey Counties in favor of sweet
red ones from Garrard how can I say
they are sweet you just know fondling them
it’s October the many colors of corn
squash pumpkins gourds twisted into curves
of computer art she comes from E’town
twice a month swears they have no fresh markets
stares at produce from backs of pickups
points out those smuggled from distant
lands which red potatoes would you pick
she asks having already seen the chosen ones
one more time around she pleads delaying
the moment of departure her mother gone
four months now.