Lights on a Ground of Darkness

September 7, 2009

Lights on a Ground of DarknessKooser-LightsDarkness
Ted Kooser

University of Nebraska Press
$10.95, Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-2642-5
Memoir

“Former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser captures the essence of his mother’s family in this collection of memories of his grandparents and their Iowa home.  With a poetic and childlike eye for detail and his skillful use of imagery and language, he fondly evokes the people and places of his memory, those he loved the most.”
– Carla Ketner, Chapters Books & Gifts, Seward, NE

“Told with genuine love for the characters in Ted Kooser’s family, the vivid descriptions of times and people past carry us back to an era when pleasure was found in catching a few fish, sitting on the porch, or waiting for company to come calling.  Lights on a Ground of Darkness is a moving, beautifully written tribute to his mother, his family and a bygone era.” 
– Angie Grafstrom, Inspiration Hollow, Roseau, MN

“A poet’s eye for detail and economy of words transform the slim book into a moving work.” — Des Moines Register

Featured now in the 2009 MBA Catalog –
Books – A Reader’s Catalog
– at participating MBA member bookstores!

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MBA BOOKSELLER INFORMATION

Booksellers — Earn up to $100 in rebates from MBA for promoting LIGHTS ON A GROUND OF DARKNESS!
Midwest Connections rebate form for Lights on a Ground of Darkness (PDF)

Lights on a Ground of Darkness (ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-2642-5, $10.95)  is available from the University of Nebraska Press, through Trim Associates, or from your preferred wholesaler.  Be sure to contact the publisher for more information about this title. 

Visit the University of Nebraska Press website for more information about this book:  www.nebraskapress.unl.edu .  

MBA and the University of Nebraska Press would love to have your comments and reviews for this memoir. Please send them to us so we can share your endorsements with your fellow MBA booksellers and with your customers!

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Like the yellow, pink, and blue irises that had been transplanted from house to house over the years, the stories of poet Ted Kooser’s family had been handed down until, as his mother lay ill and dying, he felt an urgency to write them down. With a poet’s eye for detail, Kooser captures the beauty of the landscape and the vibrancy of his mother’s Iowa family, the Mosers, in precise, evocative language.

The center of the family’s love is Kooser’s uncle, Elvy, a victim of cerebral palsy. Elvy’s joys are fishing, playing pinochle, and drinking soda from the ice chest at his father’s roadside Standard Oil station. Kooser’s grandparents, their kin, and the activities and pleasures of this extended family spin out and around the armature of Elvy’s blessed life.
Kooser has said that writing this book was the most important work he has ever undertaken because it was his attempt to keep these beloved people alive against the relentless erosion of time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR kooser_barn

Ted Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and former U.S. poet laureate, is Presidential Professor of the University of Nebraska. He is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Valentines (Nebraska 2008) and The Blizzard Voices (available in a Bison Books edition). Valentines, Blizzard Voices, and Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press) are all past winners of the Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award for poetry.

His award-winning prose book, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, is also available in a Bison Books edition.

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