Abandoned Farmhouse

“Abandoned Farmhouse,” written by American poet Ted Kooser, changed the trajectory of Kooser’s poetic reception with its publication in Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (1980) by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His work up until this point had mostly been limited to small regional press publications. However, as part of the renowned Pitt Poetry series, a showcase for a diverse range of contemporary American poets, Kooser’s Sure Signs collection found a wider audience and received critical praise. It also received the Society of Midland Authors Award for best book of poetry by a Midwestern writer written that year. Kooser has won many awards since then; from 2004-2006, he served as Poet Laureate of the United States.

“Abandoned Farmhouse” is an early poem—one of the few selected for the above-mentioned collection from his first book, Official Entry Blank (1969). The poem exemplifies much of what he is best known for. It is a lyrical poem of vivid images telling a story in plain language. His character portraits have been compared to those of Edwin Arlington Robinson and The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Like Robert Frost, Kooser is not a “regional poet” in the diminutive, provincial sense.