In this column, Ted Kooser features a poem by the poet laureate of Kansas, Jonathan Holden, who is also the poet-in-residence at Kansas State University.
Kooser comments about the poem: “I may be a little sappy, but I think that almost everyone is doing the best he or she can, despite all sorts of obstacles. This poem by Jonathan Holden introduces us to a young car salesman, who is trying hard, perhaps too hard. Holden is the past poet laureate of Kansas and poet in residence at Kansas State University in Manhattan.”
The following lines are a sample from the poem “Car Showroom”:
Day after day, along with his placid
automobiles, that well-groomed
sallow young man had been waiting for
me, as in the cheerful, unchanging
weather of a billboard . . .
To read the entire poem, please go to American Life in Poetry: Column 161.
*****
