
Local Wonders
Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives )
Paperback
Other Editions of This Title:
Digital Audiobook (8/5/2009)
Compact Disc (1/1/2013)
MP3 CD (8/1/2009)
Compact Disc (8/1/2009)
Description
In the end, what makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, or baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood. This writer is a seer in the truest sense of the word, discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, the deep beneath the shallow, the abiding wisdom in the pithy Bohemian proverbs that are woven into his essays.
Praise For Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives )…
"A quietly eloquent diary of a year in a small town in Nebraska. . . . This is a heartfelt plainspoken book about slowing down and appreciating the world around you. . . . Maybe it's exactly the feeling your friends, even you, are looking for."—New York Times book critic Janet Maslin on CBS News Sunday Morning
"Eloquent meditations on country pleasures, the rhythms of the seasons and the lingering presence of Czech folk culture in rural Nebraska."—Dan Cryer, Newsday
"Clear, generous, and imaginative, Local Wonders increases the sum of the world's best goods."—Patrice Koelsch, Speakeasy
"Through his eyes we learn to see, then appreciate, the beauty and grace in everyday miracles, the comfort and sanctity in local wonders."—Booklist
“Kooser forges connections with the past through witty, commonsense proverbs inherited from Czech and German immigrants to southeastern Nebraska. The proverbs lend a poetic folk wisdom to the examination of his rural environs.”—Jeffrey Galbraith, Harvard Review
"Local Wonders should be read and reread. It is a treasure, like the ripe wild plums Mr. Kooser, a retired insurance executive, picks along rural Nebraska roadsides."—Dan Barber, Dallas Morning News
"In this elegaic volume of four chapters, National Poet Laureate Kooser shares with the reader a lifetime of observations about home, familiy, and land distlled into a series of sometimes sparkling, other times electrifying, and always engaging scenes that read like a poet's diary."—Mark Easter, Colorado Review
"Reading Ted Kooser's Local Wonders, I feel like I've wandered into another world, a place where the past endures—broken down a little, it's true—and where the present contains enough room to pay attention to the people and the countryside around you. This is simple, patient prose, the annotations of living in a wide-open place."—Verlyn Klinkenborg
"Ted Kooser's Local Wonders is the quietest magnificent book I've ever read."—Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall
Bison Books, 9780803278110, 158pp.
Publication Date: March 1, 2004