Chris Semansky's most recent collection of poems, Blindsided, has been published by 26 Books of Portland, Oregon and nominated for an Oregon book award. In the following essay Semansky examines Ted Kooser's poem "The Constellation Orion" in light of his ideas on truth-telling and poetry.

"The Constellation Orion" is a typical Ted Kooser poem. Not only because it is short and accessible to the unschooled reader of modern or contemporary poetry, but because it embodies Kooser's idea of truth-telling in poems. Kooser was born in Iowa and has lived in Iowa and Nebraska for his entire life. His poems exhibit what we might expect of a (stereotypical) Midwestern sensibility: they are direct, descriptive, and very often, literal.

In "Lying for the Sake of Making Poems," an essay which appeared in Prairie Schooner, Kooser outlines his ideas on truth-telling and poetry. Admitting that he may be"hopelessly old-fashioned," Kooser...