Since I missed posting last week, this is post number 16, not “week 16”. Apparently, I couldn’t keep up that rigorous weekly schedule. Sigh.
If you’ve been following along on these posts, you’ve probably figured out that I prefer poets that write it beautifully, but plainly. Poets that don’t send you too often to an encyclopedia or a mythology guide book to figure out some obscure reference.
Last week on one of my neighborhood walks I opened up a Little Free Library door and found a jar of buttons. I didn’t take it, as I’m sure someone else would put it to better use than I can. But it immediately reminded me of one of my favorite Ted Kooser poems. I heard Ted read this at the Fox Cities Book Festival several years ago. He signed my book on the page of this poem.
This poem takes me back to my childhood when every house I entered harbored a jar of buttons. And the first stanza of this poem just knocks me out. What a way to describe it! And the extended metaphor is preserved throughout. A poem to study and emulate.
A Jar of Buttons
by Ted Kooser
This is from a core sample
from the floor of the Sea of Mending,
a cylinder packed with shells
that over many years
sank through fathoms of shirts—
pearl buttons, blue buttons—
and settled together
beneath waves of perseverance,
an ocean upon which
generations of women set forth,
under the sails of gingham curtains,
and, seated side by side
on decks sometimes salted by tears,
made small but important repairs.
From “Delights & Shadows” (2004) by Ted Kooser, from Copper Canyon Press,
used here by permission of the author.