Kooser

It's the birthday of Ted Kooser, who puts together the "American Life in Poetry" that runs in newspapers (and online, of course). More about him here at Writer's Almanac, which included this note: He wanted to be a writer, but he flunked out of graduate school. So he took the first job he was offered, at a life insurance company, and he worked there for 35 years. He said: "I believe that writers write for perceived communities, and that if you are a lifelong professor of English, it's quite likely that you will write poems that your colleagues would like; that is, poems that will engage that community. I worked every day with people who didn't read poetry, who hadn't read it since they were in high school, and I wanted to write for them."