Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.
Ted Kooser: Abandoned Farmhouse
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.
A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.
~~~
Copyright 2025 Ted Kooser. From the anthology What the House Knows (Terrapin, 2025) edited by Diane Lockward. Poem included by permission of the author and Terrapin Books.
Ted Kooser is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Raft (Copper Canyon Press, 2024) and Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2018). His honors and awards include the Pulitzer Prize, two NEA fellowships and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize. He served as the thirteenth United States Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. He lives in rural Nebraska.
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
He is SUCH a master. Talk about finding the eloquent detail. Bravissimo.
LikeLike
There’s a wonderful gentleness in this poem, no blaming, simply delicate observation. Reading the poem, I wonder what the objects in our house and three acres would say should we choose or be forced by accident, war, or another agent, to leave without “cleansing” the property.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The objects in our lives speak of who we are…
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love this sad poem. I will buy the anthology❤️
LikeLike
Always a delight to encounter a Ted Kooser poem. I so admire his clear and insightful ways of expressing what may seem simple but which has so much depth. And thank you Michael for the link to Naomi’s perfect tribute to him.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That is such a perfect, imaginative way to describe an abandoned house and leave us to draw our own conclusions while giving us some hints in lines to remember. I love Ted Kooser’s work. Always inspiring.
LikeLiked by 2 people
He is an American original.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
Always a joy to spend time with a Ted Kooser poem. ❤️
LikeLiked by 3 people
It certainly is!
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
I must pull out some Ted Kooser again.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Certainly, a major American poet.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Ted Kooser is my hero. The quintessential American poet who notices the smallest details, brings us to compassion and to our knees with his plainsong. His great beating heart from Nebraska reminds us of what it is to be American — the hard working, uncomplaining kind, the caring for neighbors and creatures kind, the kind we need so badly to rise up and rescue us now. So thankful for his gentle wisdom today.
LikeLiked by 6 people
As Naomi Shihab Nye says in one of her poems, “Ted Kooser is my president.”
LikeLiked by 8 people
https://voxpopulisphere.com/2017/02/01/naomi-shihab-nye-ted-kooser-is-my-president/
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you. I took classes at Tassajara with her. She is a caring, generous person besides being one of my favorite poets.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I taught this poem to a workshop last week — how a detail can speak decades of labor, decades of family life, of hope. What a poem!
LikeLiked by 5 people
Exactly!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Abandoned farms. My summer as the hired man on a dairy farm, I picked rocks out of fields, the soil was mediocre, the hilly terrain not fit for making much money. Abandoned farm houses.
My cousin and I used to sneak into them scattered around a defunct Polish settlement. In one we were confronted by a porcupine. In another the corpse of a goat on the living room floor. Everywhere the abandonments. What was left was quiet decay. Years later, the houses intact enough often became meth labs. Northern Minnesota, Northern Wisconsin.
But never was I able to describe the devastation like Ted Kooser does so lovingly here. The human piece is the missing part from my own recollections, I never learned enough about the farm families to evoke them. Just the ruins, or the crows flying over the abandoned Polish cemetery.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you, Jim. Your comment is a beautiful prose poem.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I have frequently run across abandoned homes, almost falling over, on distant bike trails and besides all the above items mentioned above are, trophies, the kind our kids get for participating in events, sometimes noting that the recipient actually ranked high in the event. Those seemed to me to one of the saddest things I came across.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Beautiful, Mel. The detail of one item implies an entire life.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I was recently in western Nebraska and saw many abandoned houses. You can feel the stories in them, but Ted Kooser just told us some.
LikeLiked by 4 people
The Monongahela valley in western PA, where I live, has a huge number of abandoned houses, barns, factories, and commercial buildings. According to my daughter-in-law, who has founded a nonprofit to deal with the problem, there are over 40,000 abandoned houses in the town where she lives. Ted Kooser evokes the tragic beauty of one of these buildings near his home in Nebraska. These abandoned buildings are the physical emblem of the hollowing out of America that has led to the radicalization of the rural population. Now the whole country has to suffer the results of our neglect of the rural and small town working class.
>
LikeLiked by 4 people
A novel in one page.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Indeed, it is an entire novel in 200 words.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
Such a poignant poem, and What the House Knows is a wonderful anthology.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yes, it is a beautiful anthology.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people