American Life in Poetry #7: Leonard Nathan.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE Leonard Nathan is a master of short poems in which two or three figures are placed on what can be seen to be a stage, as in a drama. Here, as in other poems like it, the speaker's sentences are rich with implications. This is the title work from Nathan's book from Orchises Press (1999): 

The Potato Eaters 

Sometimes, the naked taste of potato 

reminds me of being poor. 

The first bites are gratitude, 

the rest, contented boredom. 

The little kitchen still flickers 

like a candle-lit room in a folktale. 

Never again was my father so angry, 

my mother so still as she set the table, 

or I so much at home. 

Reprinted by permission of the author, whose most recent book is "Tears of the Old Magician," Orchises Press, 2003. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry. 

At Virtual Grub Street by/about Ted Kooser:

• American Gothic (a review of Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser. Copper Canyon Press, 2004);
• Ted Kooser and the American Life in Poetry column.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The un-Bad Quarto of Shakespeare’s Henry V. May 14, 2022. “The speaker of the famous epilogue at  the end of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV asks the listeners’ patience.”
• The Death of Sir Edward Vere, son of the 17th Earl of Oxford and Anne Vavasour. May 8, 2022. “Mr. Sedgwick wrote to me for a prayer for Sir Edward Vere.”
• How Shakespeare gave Ben Jonson the Infamous Purge. November 7, 2021. “Of course, De Vere could not openly accuse Jonson of having outed him as Shakespeare.”
• A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.